
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 



By MATTHEW ARNOLD 



Author of "MEROPE: A TRAGEDY," "THE POPU- 
LAR EDUCATION OF FRANCE," " CULTURE AND 
ANARCHY," "POEMS," etc., etc, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 




FIRST AND SECOND SERIES COMPLETE 



A. L. BURT COMPANY, ^ J^ J> j^ 
^ ^ ^ PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 



p 



PREFACE. 

(1865,) 



Several of the Essays which are here collected and 
reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be much 
criticized at the time of their first appearance. I am not 
now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to those criti- 
cisms ; for one or two explanations which are desirable, I 
shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to find an op- 
portunity ; but, indeed, it is not in my nature, — some of 
my critics would rather say, not in my power, — to dispute 
on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. 
To try and approach truth on one side after another, not 
to strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any 
one side, with violence and self-will, — it is only thus, it 
seems to me, that mortals may hope to gain any vision of 
the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall never see except 
in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will 
do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, 
one, favorite, particular line, is inevitably destined to run 
his head into the folds of the black robe in which she is 
wrapped. 

So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this 
preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which 
certain phrases that some of them use make me appre- 
hensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of 
Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canterbury, 
complaining of some remarks of mine, uttered now a long 
while ago, on his version of the Iliad. One cannot be al- 
ways studying one's own works, and I was really under 
the impression, till I saw Mr. Wright's complaint, that I 



Vi PREFACE. 

had- spoken of him with all respect. The reader may 
judge of my astonishment, therefore, at finding, from Mr. 
Wright's pamphlet, that I had '' declared with much so- 
lemnity that there is not any proper reason for his exist- 
ing." That I never said ; but, on looking back at my 
Lectures on translating Homer, I find that I did say, not 
that Mr. Wright, but that Mr. Wright's version of the 
Iliad, repeating in the main the merits and defects of 
Cowper's version, as Mr. Sotheby's repeated those of Pope's 
version, had, if I might be pardoned for saying so, no 
proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I expressly spoke 
of the merit of his version ; but 1 confess that the phrase, 
qualified as I have shown, about its want of a proper 
reason for existing, I used. Well, the phrase had, per- 
haps, too much vivacity ; we have all of us a right to 
exist, we and our works ; an unpopular author should be 
the last person to call in question this right. So I gladly 
withdraw the offending phrase, and I am sorry for having 
used it ; Mr. Wright, however, would perhaps be more in- 
dulgent to my vivacity, if he considered that we are none 
of us likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but 
the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, 
the last glimpse of color before we all go into drab, — the 
drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, austerely literal 
future. Yes, the world will soon be the Philistines' I and 
then, with every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and the 
whole earth filled and ennobled every morning by the 
magnificent roaring of the young lions of the Daily Tele- 
grajyh, we shall all yawn in one another's faces with the 
dismallest, the most unimpeachable gravity. 

But I return to my design in writing this Preface. 
That design was, after apologizing to Mr. Wright for my 
vivacity of five years ago, to beg him and others to let me 
bear my own burdens, without saddling the great and 
famous University to which I have the honor to belong 
with any portion of them. What I mean to deprecate is 
such phrases as, '^ his professorial assault," ^' his assertions 
issued ex cathedra." '*the sanction of his name as the 
representative of poetry," and so on. Proud as I am of my 



PREFACE. Vji 

connection with the University of Oxford,* I can truly 
say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is undertak- 
ing when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that 
powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned organ, 
the modern Englishman, I have always sought to stand 
by myself, and to compromise others as little as possible. 
Besides this, my native modesty is such, that I have al- 
ways been shy of assuming the honorable style of Professor, 
because this is a title 1 share with so many distinguished 
men, — Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor 
Frickel, and others, — who adorn it, I feel, much more 
than I do. 

However, it is not merely out of modesty that I prefer 
to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself, as a plain 
citizen of the republic of letters, and not as an office- 
bearer in a hierarchy, the whole responsibility for all I 
write ; it is much more out of genuine devotion to the 
University of Oxford, for which I feel, and always must 
feel, the fondest, the most reverential attachment. In an 
epoch of dissolution and transformation, such as that on 
which we are now entered, habits, ties, and associations 
are inevitably broken up, the action of individuals becomes 
more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, disputes, 
which necessarily attend individual action, are brought 
into greater prominence. Who would not gladly keep 
clear, from all these passing clouds, an august institution 
which was there before they arose, and which will be 
there when they have blown over ? 

It is true, the Saturday Revieiu maintains that our epoch 
of transformation is finished ; that we have found our phil- 
osophy ; that the British nation has searched all anchor- 
ages for the spirit, and has finally anchored itself, in the 
fulness of perfected knowledge, on Benthamism. This 
idea at first made a great impression on me ; not only be- 
cause it is so consoling in itself, but also because it ex- 
plained a phenomenon which in the summer of last year 
had, I confess, a good deal troubled me. At that time 

1 When the above was written the author had still the Chair 
of Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated. 



viii PREFACE. 

my avocations led me travel almost daily on one of the 
Great Eastern Lines, — the Woodford Branch. Every 
one knows that the murderer, Miiller, perpetrated his de- 
testable act on the North London Railway, close by. The 
English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble unit, 
travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. Well, 
the demoraUzation of our class, — the class which (the 
newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may repeat it 
without vanity) has done all the great things which have 
ever been done in England, — the demoralization, I say, 
of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, was something 
bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the Saturday 
Revieiu knows), I escaped the infection ; and, day after 
day, I used to ply my agitated fellow-travelers with all the 
consolations which my transcendentalism would naturally 
suggest to me. I reminded them how Caesar refused to 
take precautions against assassination, because life was 
not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for 
it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are 
in the life of the world. *' Suppose the worst to happen," 
I said, addressing a portly jeweler from Cheapside ; *' sup- 
pose even yourself to be the victim ; il n^y a pas d^homme 
necessaire. We should miss you for a day or two upon 
the Woodford Branch ; but the great mundane movement 
would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would still 
be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omni- 
buses would still run, there would still be the old crush at 
the corner of Fenchurch Street." All was of no avail. 
Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great Eng- 
hsh middle-class, their passionate, absorbing, almost 
bloodthirsty clinging to life. At the moment I thought 
tliis over-concern a little unworthy ; but the Saturday 
Revieio suggests a touching explanation of it. What I 
took for the ignoble clinging to life of a comfortable 
worldling, was, perhaps, only the ardent longing of a 
faithful Benthamite, traversing an age still dimmed by 
the last mists of transcendentalism, to be spared long 
enough to see his religion in the full and final blaze of its 
triumph. This respectable man, whom I imagined to be 



PREFACE. ix 

going up to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or 
to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the de- 
liberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, perhaps, 
in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain from Mr. 
Bentham's executors a secret bone of his great, dissected 
master. 

And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the Satur- 
day Revieio has here, for once, fallen a victim to an 
idea, — a beautiful but a deluding idea, — and that the 
British nation has not yet, so entirely as the reviewer 
seems to imagine, found the last word of its philosophy. 
No, we are all seekers still ! seekers often make mistakes, 
and I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and 
not to touch Oxford. Beautiful city ! so venerable, so 
lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our 
century, so serene ! 

** There are our young barbarians, all at play I " 

And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her 
gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers 
the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny 
that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us 
nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to per- 
fection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen 
from another side ? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science 
of Tiibingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been 
so romantic ! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given 
thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the 
Philistines ! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and 
unpopular names, and impossible loyalties ! what example 
could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine in 
ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that 
bondage to which we are all prone, that bondage which 
Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, 
makes it his friend's highest praise (and nobly did 
Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight 
behind him ; — the bondage of '^ was wis alle Mndigt, 
DAS gemeine! '* She will forgive me, even if I have un- 



X PREFACE. 

wittingly drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her un- 
worthy son ; for she is generous, and the cause in which 
I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is 
our puny warfare against the Philistines, compared with 
the warfare which this queen of romance has been waging 
against them for centuries, and will wage after we are 
gone ? 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time. . . 1 
II. The Literary Influence of Academies 31 

III. Maurice de Guerin 59 

IV. Eugenie de Guerin 89 

V. Heinrich Heine 115 

VI. Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment 143 

VII. A Persian Passion Play 164 

VIII. Joubert 195 

IX. Spinoza and the Bible 226 

X. Marcus Aurelius 253 

XI. The Study of Poetry 279 

XII. Milton 308 

XIII. Thomas Gray 315 

XIV. John Keats 331 

XV. Wordsworth 343 

XVI. Byron 364 

XVII. Shelley 385 

XVIII. Count Leo Tolstoi 409 

XIX. Amiel 432 



ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT 

TIME. 

Many objections have been made to a proposition 
which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, I 
ventured to put forth ; a proposition about criticism, and 
its importance at the present day. I said : ** Of the lit- 
erature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of 
Europe in general, the_jnain effort, for now many years, 
has been a critical effort ; the endeavor, in all branches 
of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, 
to see the object as in itself it really is.'' I added, that 
owing to the operation in English literature of certain 
causes, " almost the last thing for which one would come 
to English literature is just that very thing which now 
Europe most desires, — criticism;" and that the power 
and value of English literature was thereby impaired. 
More than one rejoinder declared that the importance I 
here assigned to criticism was excessive, and asserted the 
inherent superiority of the creative effort of the human 
spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having 
been led by a Mr. Shairp's excellent notice of Words- 
worth ^ to turn again to his biography, I found, in the 

1 I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England 
during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing 
a notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent critic, — to serve 
as an introduction to an eminent author's works, might be re- 
vived among us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding 
editions of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp's notice might, it seems to 



2 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always 
listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed 
on the critic's business, which seems to justify every pos- 
sible disparagement of it. Wordsworth says in one of his 
letters : — 

*'The writers in these publications" (the Reviews), 
" while they prosecute their inglorious employment, can- 
not be supposed to be in a state of mind very favorable 
for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so 
pure as genuine poetry." 

And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation quotes 
a more elaborate judgment to the same effect : — 

''Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infi- 
nitely lower than the inventive ; and he said to-day that if 
the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques on the 
works of others were given to original composition, of 
whatever kind it might be, it would be much better em- 
ployed ; it would make a man find out sooner his own 
level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or 
malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of 
others, a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is 
quite harmless." 

It is almost too much to expect of poor human nature, 
that a man capable of producing some effect in one line of 
literature, should, for the greater good of society, volun- 
tarily doom himself to impotence and obscurity in an- 
other. Still less is this to be expected from men addicted 
to the composition of the ''false or malicious criticism" 
of which Wordsworth speaks. However, everybody 
would admit that a false or malicious criticism had better 
never have been written. Everybody, too, would be will- 
ing to admit, as a general proposition, that the critical 
faculty is lower than the inventive. But is it true that 
criticism is really, in itself, a baneful and injurious em- 

me, excellently serve ; it is written from the point of view of an 
admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right ; but then the dis- 
ciple must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of letters, 
not, as too often happens, some relation or friend with no qualifi- 
cation for his task except affection for his author. 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 3 

plojment ; is it true that all time given to writing cri- 
tiques on the works of others would be much better em- 
ployed if it were given to original composition, of what- 
ever kind this may be ? Is it true that Johnson had 
better have gone on producing more Irenes instead of 
VvTiting his Lives of the Poets; nay, is it certain that 
Wordsworth himself was better employed in making his 
Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his celebrated 
Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism of the works of 
others ? Wordsworth was himself a great critic, and it is 
to be sincerely regretted that he has not left us more crit- 
icism ; Goethe was one of the greatest of critics, and we 
may sincerely congratulate ourselves that he has left us so 
much criticism. Without wasting time over the exagger- 
ation which Wordsworth^s judgment on criticism clearly 
contains, or over an attempt to trace the causes, — not 
difficult, I think, to be traced, — which may have led 
Wordsworth to this exaggeration, a critic may with ad- 
vantage seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, 
and for asking himself of what real service at any given 
moment the practice of criticism either is or may be made 
to his own mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits 
of others. 

The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. 
True ; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two 
things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the 
exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, 
is the highest function of man ; it is proved to be so by 
man's finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeni- 
able, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this 
free creative activity in other ways than in producing 
great works of literature or art ; if it were not so, all but 
a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness 
of all men. They may have it in well-doing, they may 
have it in learning, they may have it even in criticizing. 
This is one thing to be kept in mind. Another is, that 
the exercise of the creative power in the production of 
great works of literature or art, however high this exer- 
cise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all 



4 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

conditions possible ; and that therefore labor may be 
vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more 
fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it pos- 
sible. This creative power works with elements, with 
materials ; what if it has not those materials, those 
elements, ready for its use ? In that case it must surely 
wait till they are ready. Now, in literature, — I will limit 
myself to literature, for it is about literature that the 
question arises, — the elements with which the creative 
power works are ideas ; the best ideas on every matter 
which literature touches, current at the time. At any 
rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern lit- 
erature no manifestation of the creative power not working 
with these can be very important or fruitful. And I say 
current at the time, not merely accessible at the time ; for 
^creative literary genius does not principally show itself in 
discovering new ideas, that is rather the business of the 
J)hilosopher. The grand work of literary genius is a work 
of sjiithesis_andu.expjQsition, not of analysis and discovery ; 
its gift lies in the faculty of being Jiappilyi-inspired. by a 
cerJ^jiL intellectual ^,nd-s pi r itua l a tmosphe re, by a certain 

[order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing 
divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most 

'effective and attractive combinations, — making beautiful 
works with them, in short. But it must have the atmos- 
phere, it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in 
order to work freely ; and these it is not so easy to com- 
mand. This is why great creative epochs in literature are 
so rare, this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory 
in the productions of many men of real genius ; because, 
for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers 
must concur, the power of the man and the power of the 
moment, and the man is not enough without the moment ; 
the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed 
elements, and those elements are not in its own control. 

\ Nay, they are more within the control of the critical 
power. It is the business of the critical power, as I said 
in the words already quoted, " in all branches of knowledge, 

1 theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 5 

as in itself it really is." Thus it tends, at last, to make 
an intellectual situation of which the creative power can 
profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of 
ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with 
that which it displaces ; to make the best ideas prevail. 
Presently these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth 
is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth every- 
where ; out of this stir and growth come the creative 
epochs of literature. 

Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations 
of the general march of genius and of society, — considera- 
tions which are apt to become too abstract and impalpa- 
ble, — every one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to 
know life and the world before dealing with them in 
poetry ; and life and the world being in modern times very 
complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth 
much, implies a great critical effort behind it ; else it must 
be a comparatively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. 
This is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it, 
and Goethe's so much ; both Byron and Goethe had a great 
productive power, but Goethe's was nourished by a great 
critical effort providing the true materials for it, and 
Byron's was not ; Goethe knew life and the world, the 
poet's necessary subjects, much more comprehensively 
and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more 
of them, and he knew them much more as they really are. 

It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative 
activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this 
century, had about it in fact something premature ; and 
that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of 
them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied 
and do still accompany them to prove hardly more lasting 
than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And 
this prematureness comes from its having proceeded with- 
out having its proper data, without sufficient materials to 
work with. In other words, the English poetry of the 
first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty 
of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron 
so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth 



6 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness 
and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and dis- 
paraged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much 
that I cannot wish him different ; and it is vain, no doubt, 
to imagine such a man different from what he is, to sup- 
pose that he could have been different. But surely the 
one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater 
poet than he is, — his thought richer, and his influence of 
wider application, — was that he should have read more 
books, among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom 
he disparaged without reading him. 

But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to a 
misunderstanding here. It was not really books and 
reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch ; Shelley 
had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading. 
Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so glibly, and often 
with so little discernment of the real import of what we 
are saying — had not many books ; Shakespeare was no deep 
reader. True ; but in the Greece of Pindar^^nd Soph- 
ocles, in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a 
current of ideas in the highest degree animating and 
nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the 
fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, jntell igent 
and alive. And this state of things is the true basis for 
the creative power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its 
materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books and 
reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps 
to this. Even when this does not actually exist, books 
and reading may enable a man to construct a kind of 
semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge 
and intelligence in which he may live and work. This is 
by no means an equivalent to the artist for the nationally 
diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles or 
Shakespeare ; but, besides that it may be a means of prep- 
aration for such epochs, it does really constitute, if many 
share in it, a quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great 
value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and 
the long and widely-combined critical effort of Germany 
formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 7 

was no national glow of life and thought there as in the 
Athens of Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That 
was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of equiv- 
alent for it in the complete culture and unfettered think- 
ing of a large body of Germans. That was his strength. 
In the England of the first quarter of this century there 
was neither a national glow of life and thought, such as 
we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a 1 
force of learning and criticism such as were to be found I 
in Germany. Therefore the creative power of poetry 
wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a 
basis ; a thorough interpretation of the world was neces- 
sarily denied to it. 

At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense 
stir of the French Eevolution and its age should not have 
come a crop of works of genius equal to that which came 
out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or 
out of that of the Renascence, with its powerful epis- 
ode the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of 
the French Revolution took a character which essentially 
distinguished it from such movements as these. These 
were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual 
movements ; movements in which the human spirit looked 
for its satisfaction in itself and in the increased play of its 
own activity. The French Revolution took a political, 
practical character. The movement, which went on in 
France under the old regime from 1700 to 1789, was far 
more really akin than that of the Revolution itself to the 
movement of the Renascence ; the France of Voltaire and 
Rousseau told far more powerfully upon the mind of Eu- 
rope than the France of the Revolution. Goethe re- 
proached this last expressly with having * thrown quiet 
culture back." Nay, and the true key to how much in our 
Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this ! — that they had 
their source in a great movement of feeling, not in a 
great movement of mind. The French Revolution, how- 
ever, — that object of so much blind love and so much blind 
hatred, — found undoubtedly its motive-power in the in- 
telligence of men, and not in their practical sense ; this 



S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

is what distinguishes it from the English Revolution of 
Charles the First^s time. This is what makes it a more 
spiritual event than our Revolution, an event of much 
more powerful and world-wide interest, though practically 
less successful ; it appeals to an order of ideas which are 
universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a tiling, Is 
it rational ? 1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal ? or, when 
it went furthest, Is it according to conscience ? This is 
the English fashion, a fashion to be treated, within its 
own sphere, with the highest respect ; for its success, 
within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But what 
is law in one place is not law in another ; what is law 
here to-day is not law even here to-morrow ; and as for 
conscience, what is binding on one man's conscience is 
not binding on another's. The old woman who threw her 
stool at the head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's 
Church at Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which mil- 
lions of the human race may be permitted to remain 
strangers. But the prescriptions of of reason are absolute, 
unchanging, of universal validity ; to count hy tens is the 
easiest way of coimting — that is a proposition of which 
every one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ; at 
least I should say so if we did not live in a country where 
it is not impossible that any morning we may find a letter 
in the Times declaring that a decimal coinage is an 
absurdity. That a whole nation should have been pen- 
etrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an 
ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a 
very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of 
mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes 
into the motives which alone, in . general, impel great 
masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction 
given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and folhes 
in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives 
from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which 
it took for its law, and from the passion with which it 
could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique and 
still living power ; it is — it will probably long remain — 
the greatest, the most animating event in history. And 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 9 

as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even 
though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate passion, 
is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of good, France 
has reaped from hers one fruit — the natural and legitimate 
fruit though not precisely the grand fruit she expected : 
she is the country in Europe where the people is most alive. 
But the mania for giving an immediate political and 
practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason 
was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element : on 
this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we are 
in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal 
of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for 
themselves cannot be too much lived with ; but to trans- 
port them abruptly into the world of politics, and prac- 
tice, violently to revolutionize this world to their bid- 
ding, — that is quite another thing. There is the world 
of ideas and there is the world of practice ; the French 
are often for suppressing the one and the English the 
other ; but neither is to be suppressed. A member of the 
House of Commons said to me the other day : *' That a 
thing is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it 
whatever." I venture to think he was wrong ; that a 
thing is an anomaly is an objection to it, but absolutely 
and in the sphere of ideas : it is not necessarily, under 
such and such circumstances, or at such and such a mo- 
ment, an objection to it in the sphere of politics and 
practice. Joubert has said beautifully : ** C'^st la force et 
le droit qui reglent toutes choses dans le monde ; la force 
en attendant le droit." (Force._and right are the go ver- 
noxa__of_-this-Aw»ifl ; force till right is ready.) Force 
till right is ready ; ancTTill r iggf is^a^ly^orce, the ex- 
isting o rd er of thin gs, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. 
But right is something moral, and implies inward rec- 
ognition^ free assent of the will ; we are not ready for right, 
— right, so far as we are concerned, is not ready, — until 
we have attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. 
The way in which for us it may change and transform 
force, the existing order of things, and become, in its 
turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, should depend on 



10 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the way in which, when our time comes, we see it and 
\ will it. Therefore for other people enamored of their 
1 own newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon 
' us as ours, and violently to substitute their _ri^ghtJor.-Our 
force, is an act of tyranny^_a^d to be resisted. It sets at 
liaugHt the second great half of our maxim, force till 
right is ready. This was the g rand-^rrQr-of~-tbe-£r£ncfh 
Revolution ; and its movement,,/)f idea&Jayujmttjjig^ie 
intellectual sphere and ruslmig^f urjouslyjnJbojt^^ 
sphereTran, indexed,' a prodigious and memorable course, 
but produced no such intellectual fruit as the movement 
of ideas of the Renascence, and created, in opposition to 
itself, what I may call an epocfi of concentration' The 
great force of that epoch of concentr^tian waaJEngland ; 
and the great voice of that e poch of c^ centration was 
Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke's writings on 
the French Revolution as superannuated and conquered 
by the event ; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades 
of bigotry and prejudice. I will not deny that they 
are often disfigured by the violence and passion of the 
moment, and that in some directions Burke's view 
was bounded, and his observation therefore at fault. But 
on the whole, and for those who can make the needful 
corrections, what distinguishes these writings is their 
profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth. They 
contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, 
dissipate the " heavy atmosphere which its own nature is 
apt to engender round it, and make its resistance rational 
instead of mechanical. 

But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, 
he bnngs_thought_to_Jbeax_upon.-4iolitics, he saturates 
politics with thought. It_is_Jii&-ajDcident_thatJiis. ideas 
were at the service gf^ an epoch of concent ration^-iiot of 
an e^och, of expansion j it is his characteristic that he so 
li ^d by, ideas, and had such a source of them welling up 
within him, that he could float even an epoch of concen- 
tration and English Tory politics with them. It does not 
hurt him that Dr. Price and the Liberals were enraged 
with him ; it does not even hurt him that George the 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. H 

Third and the Tories were enchanted with him. His 
greatness is that he lived in a world which neither Eng- 
lish Liberalism nor English Toryism is apt to enter ; — 
the world of ideas, not the world of catchwords and party- 
habits. So far is it from being really true of him that he 
" to party gave up what was meant for mankind," that at 
the very end of his fierce struggle with the French Rev- 
olution, after all his invectives against its false preten- 
sions, hollo wness, and madness, with his sincere convic- 
tion of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum 
on the best means of combating it, some of the last pages 
he ever wrote, — the Tlioiights on French Affairs, in De- 
cember 1791, — with these striking words : — 

" The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The 
remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, 
I hope, are more united with good intentions than they 
can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, 
forever. It has given me many anxious moments for the 
last two years. If a great change is to he made in human 
affairs, the 7ninds of men will le fitted to it ; the general 
opinions and feelings will draio that way. Every fear, 
every hope ivill forivard it; and then they tuho persist in 
opposing this mighty current in human affairs, ivill ap- 
pear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than 
the mere designs of men. They will not he resolute and 
firm, T)ut perverse and olstinate,^' 

That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed 
to me one of the finest things in English literature, or in- 
deed in any literature. That_i s what I call living by 
ideas : when one side of a question has long had your 
earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when 
you hear all around you no language but one, when your 
party talks this language like a steam-engine and can 
imagine no other, — ^till to_J)e able^to think, still to be 
irresistibly-carrifid^if so it be, by_ the_nurrent of thought 
to tlie_opposite side pf _the question^ and, like Balaam, to 
be unable to speak anything but what the Lord has put in 
your mouth. I know nothing more striking, and I must 
add that I know nothing more un-English. 



12 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

For tlie Englishman in general is like my friend the 
Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that 
for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objection to 
it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland of Burke's 
day, who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, 
talks of ^^ certain miscreants, assuming the name of 
philosophers, who have presumed themselves capable of 
establishing a new system of society." The Englishman 
has been called a political animal, and he values what is 
political and practical so much that ideas easily become 
objects of dislike in his eyes, and thinkers ^^ miscreants," 
because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with 
politics and practice. This would be all very well if the 
dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas trans- 
ported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with 
practice ; but they are inevitably extended to ideas as 
such, and to the whole life of intelligence ; practice is 
everything, a free play of the mind is nothing. The 
notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects 
being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being 
an essential provider of elements without which a nation's 
spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, 
must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into 
an Englishman's thoughts. It is noticeable that the word 
curiosity^ which in other languages is used in a good 
sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of man's nature, 
just this disinterested love of a free play of the mind on 
all subjects, for its own sake, — it is noticeable, I say, that 
this word has in our language no sense of the kind, no 
sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, 
rcaL_critici sm is .essentially Jh£_exerGise otjthis_very_qual- 
ity. It ob£ya_aB jnstinct prompting i t to try to know the 
best that is known and thpuglit.in the world, irrespectivfilyL 
of practice, politics, and everything of the kind ; andj:p 
\ valueLJbiawl^dge and-thaught as they approach this best. 
Without the intrusion of any other considerations what- 
ever. This is an instinct for which there is, I think, little 
original sympathy in the practical English nature, and 
what there was of it has undergone a long benumbing 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 13 

period of blight and suppression in the epoch of concen- 
tration which followed the French Revolution. 

But epochs of concentration cannot well endure for- 
ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, 
follow them. Such an epoch of expansion seems to be 
opening in this country. In the first place all danger of a 
hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice 
has long disappeared ; like the traveler in the fable, 
therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely. 
Then, with a long peace, the ideas of Europe steal grad- 
ually and amicably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally 
small quantities at a time, with our own notions. Then, 
too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and 
brutalizing influence of our passionate material progress, 
it seems to me indisputable that this progress is likely, 
though not certain, to lead in the end to an apparition of 
intellectual life ; and that man, after he has made himself 
perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to 
do with himself next, may begin to remember that he has 
a mind, and that the mind may be made the source of 
great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the privilege of 
faith, at pr.esent, to discern this end to our railways, 
our business, and our fortune-making ; but we shall see 
if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end the true 
prophet. Our ease, our traveling, and our unbounded 
liberty to hold just as hard and securely as we please to 
the practice to which our notions have given birth, all 
tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more freely 
with these notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to 
penetrate a little into their real nature. Flutterings of 
curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear amongst 
us, and it is in these that criticism must look to find its 
account. Criticism first ; a time of true creative activity, 
perhaps, — which, as I have said, must inevitably be pre- 
ceded amongst us by a time of criticism, — hereafter, when 
criticism has done its work. 

It is of the last importance that English criticism should 
clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail 
itself of the fi.eld now opening to it, and to produce 



14 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be 
summed up in one word,— ^ disint£ j: £stedne&s ^ And-how-is 
criticism to^^showLJ^isinterestedness ? By:__keepiiig_-alool 
froin_what js_caned--^^-the--pj!^^ by 

resohitely following the law of its own nature, which is to 
be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. 
By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, 
political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty 
of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps 
ought often to be attached to them, which in this country 
at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite 
sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do 
with. Its bjisiness-is, as I have said, simply to know the 
best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its 
turn making this known, to create a current of true and 
fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with— inflexiMft 
honesty^ with.. due-ability ; but its business is to do jqo_ 
more, and to leave alone all questions of practical conse- 
quences and applications, questions which will never fail 
to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, 
besides being really false to its own nature, merely con- 
tinues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this 
country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to 
it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this 
country ? It is that practical considerations cling to it 
and stifle it. It subserves interests not its own. Our 
organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having 
practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends 
are the first thing and the play of mind the second ; so 
much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution 
of those practical ends is all that is wanted. An organ 
like the Revue des Deux Mo7ides, having for its main 
function to understand and utter the best that is known 
and thought in the world, existing, it may be said, as just 
an organ for a free play of the mind, we have not. But 
we have the Edinhurgh Eeview, existing as an organ of 
the old Whigs, and for as much play of the mind as 
may suit its being that ; we have the Quarterly Review , 
existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. |5 

of mind as may suit its being that ; we have the British 
Quarterly Bevieiv, existing as an organ of the political 
Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its 
being that ; we have the Times, existing as an organ of the 
common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as 
much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so 
on through all the varions factions, political and religious, 
of our society ; every faction has, as such, its organ of 
criticism, but the notion of combining all factions in the 
common pleasure of a free disinterested play of mind 
meets with no favor. Directly this play of mind wants 
to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical 
considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the 
chain. We saw this the other day in the extinction, so 
much to be regretted, of the Jlofne and Foreign Review, 
Perhaps in no organ of criticism in this country was there 
so much knowledge, so much play of mind ; but these 
could not save it. The DuUin Revieio subordinates play 
of mind to the practical business of English and Irish 
Catholicism, and lives. It must needs be that men should 
act in sects and parties, that each of these sects and parties 
should have its organ, and should make this organ sub- 
serve the interests of its action ; but it would be well, too, 
that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these 
interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely in- 
dependent of them. No other criticism will ever attain 
any real authority or make any real way towards its end, — 
the creating a current of true and fresh ideas. 

It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure in- 
tellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, 
has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it 
has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual 
work ; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which 
is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards per- 
fection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent 
in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A 
polemical practical criticism makes men blind even to the 
ideal imperfection of their practice, makes them willingly 
assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it 



16 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

against attack : and clearly this is narrowing and baneful 
for them. If they were reassured on the practical side, 
speculative considerations of ideal perfection they might 
be brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would 
thus gradually widen. Sir Charles Adderley says to the 
Warwickshire farmers : 

*' Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the race 
we ourselves represent, the men and women, the old 
Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the whole 
world. . . . The absence of a too enervating climate, too 
unclouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced 
so vigorous a race of people and has rendered us so su- 
perior to all the world." 

Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers : 

" I look around me and ask what is the state of Eng- 
land ? Is not property safe ? Is not every man able to 
say what he likes ? Can you not walk from one end of 
England to the other in perfect security ? I ask you 
whether, the world over or in past history, there is any- 
thing like it ? Nothing, I pray that our unrivaled hap- 
piness may last." 

Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature 
in words and thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, 
until we find ourselves safe in the streets of the Celestial 
City. 

*' Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke 
Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch iibrig bleibt — " 

says Goethe ; ^' the little that is done seems nothing when 
we look forward and see how much we have yet to do." 
Clearly this is a better line of reflection for weak humanity, 
so long as it remains on this earthly field of labor and trial. 
But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck is 
by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort. They 
only lose sight of them owing to the controversial life we 
all lead, and the practical form which all speculation takes 
with us. They have in view opponents whose aim is not 
ideal, but practical ; and in their zeal to uphold their own 
practice against these innovators, they go so far as even to 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 17 

attribute to this practice an ideal perfection. Somebody 
has been wanting to introduce a six-pound franchise, or 
to abolish church-rates, or to collect agricultural statis- 
tics by force, or to diminish local self-government. How 
natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely improper 
or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark and to say 
stoutly, *' Such a race of people as we stand, so superior 
to all the world ! The old Anglo-Saxon race, the best 
breed in the whole world ! I pray that our unrivaled 
happiness may last ! I ask you whether, the world over 
or in past history, there is anything like it ? " And so 
long as criticism answers this dithyramb by insisting that 
the old Anglo-Saxon race would be still more superior to 
all others if it had no church-rates, or that our unrivaled 
happiness would last yet longer with a six-pound franchise, 
so long will the strain, ** The best breed in the whole 
world I" swell louder and louder, everything ideal and 
refining will be lost out of sight, and both the assailed 
and their critics will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, 
perfectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual progression 
is impossible. But let criticism leave church-rates and 
the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit, without 
a single lurking thought of practical innovation, confront 
with our dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled 
in a newspaper immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck : — 

'^ A shocking child murder has just been committed at 
Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse 
there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate 
child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on 
Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in 
custody." 

Nothing but that ; but, in juxtaposition with the ab- 
solute eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, 
how eloquent, how suggestive are those few lines ! ^' Our 
old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole world ! " — 
how much that is harsh and ill-favored there is in this 
best ! Wragg ! If we are to talk of ideal perfection, of 
" the best in the whole world," has any one reflected what 
a touch of grossness in our race, what an original short- 

2 



18 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

coming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is 
shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous 
names, — Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and 
Attica they were luckier in this respect than ''the best 
race in the world ; " by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, 
poor thing ! And '' our unrivaled happiness ; " — what 
an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes 
with it and blurs it ; the workhouse, the dismal Mapperly 
Hills, — how dismal those who have seen them will remem- 
ber ; — the gloom, the smoke, the cold, the strangled il- 
legimate child ! ''I ask you whether, the world over or 
in past history, there is anything like it ? " Perhaps not, 
one is inclined to answer ; but at any rate, in that case, 
the world is very much to be pitied. And the final 
touch, — short, bleak and inhuman : Wragg is in custody. 
The sex lost in the confusion of our unrivaled happiness ; 
or (shall I say ?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off 
by the straightforward vigor of our old Anglo-Saxon breed ! 
There is profit for the spiri_Lin_sucli con-trast^-as.this ; crit- 
icism serves the cause oL^erfectioaky__£stab]isluiig^ them. 
By .eludiiig__stfirile confl^ict, by reiusing^40L-remain in the 
sphere where alone narrow and relativeL_conceptions have 
any worth and validity, criticism may diminish its mo- 
mentary impxjrtance,^ but only in this way has it_ai3hance 
of gaining admittance for those wider, and more perfect 
conceptions to which all its duty, isj^eally awed. Mr. 
Eoebuck will have a poor opinion of an adversary who re- 
plies to his defiant songs of triumph only by murmuring 
under his breath, Wragg is in custody ; but in no other 
way will these songs of triumph be induced gradually to 
moderate themselves, to get rid of what in them is exces- 
sive and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key. 
It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect 
action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and that, 
by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of de- 
tachment and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it 
condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. Slow and 
obscure it may be, but it is the only proper work of crit- 
icism. The mass of mankind will never have any ardent 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 19 

zeal for seeing things as they are ; very inadequate ideas 
will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, 
and must repose, the general practice of the world. That\ 
is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things i 
as they are will find himself one of a very small circle ; but 1 
it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work I 
that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush i 
and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and 
attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and 
tend to draw him into its vortex ; most of all will this be 
the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England. 
But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend \ 
himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the i 
critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only 
by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and I 
by at last convincing even the practical man of his sin- \ 
cerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which per- 
petually threaten him. 

For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, 
and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture 
greatly find their account. But it is not easy to lead a 
practical man, — unless you reassure him as to your prac- 
tical intentions, you have no chance of leading him, — to 
see that a thing which he has always been used to look at 
from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, 
looked at from that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the 
prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it, — that 
this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much 
less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims 
to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find language 
innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity 
of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to 
the political Englishman that the British Constitution it- 
self, which, seen from the practical side, looks such a 
magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the 
speculative side, — with its compromises, its love of facts, 
its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of clear 
thoughts, — that, seen from this side, our august Constitu- 
tion sometimes looks, — forgive me, shade of Lord Somers ! 



20 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

— a colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines ? 
How is Cobbett to say this and not be misunderstood, 
blackened as he is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in 
the field of political practice ? how is Mr. Carlyle to say 
it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into 
this field with his Latter-day Pamphlets 9 how is Mr. 
Euskin, after his pugnacious political economy ? I say, 
,' the critic must keep out of the region of immediate prac- 
tice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he 
■ wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative 
\ treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its 
benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural and 
thence irresistible manner. 

Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain ex- 
posed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere so 
much as in this country. For here people are particu- 
larly indisposed even to comprehend that without this 
free disinterested treatment of things, truth and the 
highest culture are out of the question. So immersed are 
they in practical life, so accustomed to take all their no- 
tions from this life and its processes, that they are apt to 
think that truth and culture themselves can be reached 
by the processes of this life, and that it is an impertinent 
singularity to think of reaching them in any other. *' We 
are all terrcefilii,^' cries their eloquent advocate ; ''all Phil- 
istines together. Away with the notion of proceeding by 
any other course than the course dear to the Philistines ; 
let us have a social movement, let us organize and combine 
a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it the 
liheral party, and let us all stick to each other, and back 
each other up. Let us have no nonsense about independ- 
ent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and the few and 
the many. Don't let us trouble ourselves about foreign 
thought ; we shall invent the whole thing for ourselves as 
we go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud him ; 
if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too ; we are all in the 
same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of 
truth." In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really 
a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 21 

chairman, a secretary, and advertisements ; with the ex- 
citement of an occasional scandal, with a little resist- 
ance to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome ; but 
in general, plenty of bustle and very little thought. To 
act is so easy, as Goethe says ; to think is so hard ! It 
is true that the critic has many temptations to go with 
the stream, to make one of the party movement, one of 
these terrcB Jilii ; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a 
terrce filiuSy when so many excellent people are ; but the 
critic's duty is to refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least 
to cry with Obermann : Perisso7is en resistant. 

How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had ample 
opportunity of experiencing when I ventured some time 
ago to criticize the celebrated first volume of Bishop 
Colenso.^ The echoes of the storm which was then raised 
I still, from time to time, hear grumbling around me. 
That storm arose out of a misunderstanding almost in- 
evitable. It is a result of no little culture to attain to a 
clear perception that science and religion are two wholly 
different things. The multitude will for ever confuse 
them ; but happily that is of no great real importance, for 
while the multitude imagines itself to live by its false 
science, it does really live by its true religion. Dr. 
Colenso, however, in his first volume did all he could 
to strengthen the confusion,'' and to make it dangerous. 

1 So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and contro- 
versy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time 
from the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which 
I criticized Dr. Colenso's book ; I feel bound, however, after all 
that has passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere 
impenitence for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear 
repeating yet once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, 
this sentence from my original remarks upon him ; There is 
truth of science and truth of religion ; truth of science does not 
become truth of religion till it is made religious. And I will 
add : Let us have all the science there is from the men of 
science ; from the men of religion let us have religion. 

2 It has been said I make it " a crime against literary criti- 
cism and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant." 
Need I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being 
confirmed in a confusion ? 



22 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, 
and with the most candid ignorance that this was 
the natural effect of what he was doing ; but, says 
Joubert, ''Ignorance, which in matters of morals ex- 
tenuates the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a 
crime of the first order." I criticized Bishop Colenso's 
speculative confusion. . Immediately there was a cry 
raised : '' What is this ? here is a liberal attacking a 
liberal. Do not you belong to the movement ? are not 
you a friend of truth ? Is not Bisliop Oolenso in pursuit 
of truth ? then speak with proper respect of his book. 
Dr. Stanley is another friend of truth, and you speak with 
proper respect of his book ; why make these invidious 
differences ? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal ; 
Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because it is the 
boldest, and will have the best practical consequences for 
the liberal cause. Do you want to encourage to the at- 
tack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our implacable 
enemies, the Church and State Bevietv or the Record, — the 
High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyena ? Be 
silent, therefore ; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever 
you can ! and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd 
pigeons.'' 

But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscriminate 
method. It is unfortunately possible for a man in pursuit 
of truth to write a book which reposes upon a false con- 
ception. Even the practical consequences of a book are 
to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if the book 
is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a lady 
who herself, too, is in pursuit of truth, and who writes 
with great ability, but a little too much, perhaps, under 
the influence of the practical spirit of the English liberal 
movement, classes Bishop Colenso's book and M. Eenan's 
together, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, 
as facts of the same order, works, both of them, of " great 
importance ;" '' great ability, power, and skill ;" Bishop 
Colenso's, perhaps, the most powerful ; at least. Miss 
Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude that to 
Bishop Colenso ''has been given the strength to grasp, 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 23 

and the courage to teach, truths of such deep import." 
In the same way, more than one popular writer has com- 
pared him to Luther. Now it is just this kind of false 
estimate which the critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound 
to resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the 
low ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is, that 
while the critical hit in the religious literature of Germany 
is Dr. Strauss's book, in that of France M. Kenan's book, 
the book of Bishop Colenso is the critical hit in the relig- 
ious literature of England. Bishop Colenso's book re- 
poses on a total misconception of the essential elements of 
the religious problem, as that problem is now presented 
for solution. To criticism, therefore, which seeks to have 
the best that is known and thought on this problem, it is, 
however well meant, of no importance whatever. M. 
Renan's book attempts a new synthesis of the elements 
furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, in my 
opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impos- 
sible, certainly not successful. Up to the present time, 
at any rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury's sentence on 
such recastings of the Gospel-story : Quiconque sHmagine 
la pouvoir mieux ecrire, ne Ventend pas. M. Renan had 
himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on his own 
work, when he said : '* If a new presentation of the 
character of Jesus were offered to me, I would not have it ; 
its very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best proof 
of its insufficiency." His friends may with perfect justice 
rejoin that at the sight of the Holy Land, and of the 
actual scene of the Gospel-story, all the current of M. 
Renan's thoughts may have naturally changed, and a new 
casting of that story irresistibly suggested itself to him ; 
and that this is just a case for applying Cicero^s maxim : 
Change of mind is not inconsistency — nemo doctus unquam 
mutationem cofisilii inconstant ia7n dixit esse. Neverthe- 
less, for criticism, M. Renan's first thought must still be 
the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more 
fully to commend itself, more fully (to use Coleridge's 
happy phrase about the Bible) to find us. Still M. 
Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the most real interest 



24 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

and importance, since, with all its difficulty, a fresh syn- 
thesis of the New Testament data, — not a making war on 
them, in Voltaire's fashion, not a leaving them out of 
mind, in the world's fashion, but the putting a new con- 
struction upon them, the taking them from under the 
old, traditional, conventional point of view and placing 
them under a new one, — is the very essence of the 
religious problem, as now presented ; and only by efforts 
in this direction can it receive a solution. 

Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop 
Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of our 
practical race, both here and in America, herself sets 
vigorously about a positive reconstruction of religion, about 
making a religion of the future out of hand, or at least 
setting about making it. We must not rest, she and they 
are always thinking and saying, in negative criticism, 
we must be creative and constructive ; hence we have 
such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works still 
more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will be in 
every one's mind. These works often have much ability ; 
they often spring out of sincere convictions, and a sincere 
wish to do good ; and they sometimes, perhaps, do good. 
Their fault is (if I may be permitted to say so) one which 
they have in common with the British College of Health, 
in the New Eoad. Every one knows the British College 
of Health ; it is that building with the lion and the statue 
of the Goddess Hygeia before it ; at least I am sure about 
the lion, though I am not absolutely certain about the 
Goddess Hygeia. This building does credit, perhaps, to 
the resources of Dr. Morrison and his disciples ; but it 
falls a good deal short of one's idea of what a British 
College of Health ought to be. In England, where we 
hate public interference and love individual enterprise, 
we have a whole crop of places like the British College of 
Health ; the grand name without the grand thing. 
Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they are, 
they tend to impair our taste by making us forget what 
more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly be- 
longs to a public institution. The same may be said of 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 25 

the religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and others. 
Creditable, like the British College of Health, to the re- 
sources of their authors, they yet tend to make us forget 
what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly 
belongs to religious constructions. The historic religions, 
with all their faults, have had this ; it certainly belongs 
to the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have 
this ; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion 
of the future without it. What then is the duty of criti- 
cism here ? To take the practical point of view, to ap- 
plaud the liberal movement and all its works, — its New 
Eoad religions of the future into the bargain, — for their 
general utility's sake ? By no means ; but to be perpet- 
ually dissatisfied with these works, while they perpetually 
fall short of a high and perfect ideal. 

For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they never 
can be popular, and in this country they have been very 
little followed, and one meets with immense obstacles in 
following them. That is a reason for asserting them again 
and again. Criticism must ma intain its indep iendence^of 
the_.pxactical_spiiTtj^^ts_ ai^ Even with well-meant 
efforts^of^kepi'-a^CLtical spirit-it must express dissatisfac- 
tion, ifin Uie sphere of the _jdea]L they sefimampov^ri&h- 
in^ and limiting . It must^ ^ot h urry on to the g^oal be- 
cause__o f its practic al importance. It must be patient, 
and know how to wait ; and flexible, and know how to at- 
tach itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It 
must be apt to study and praise elements that for the ful- 
ness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they 
belong to a power which in the practical sphere may be 
maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual short- 
comings or illusions of powers that in the practical sphere 
may be beneficent. And this without any notion of favor- 
ing or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power or the 
otlier ; without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, 
one power against the other. When one looks, for in- 
stance, at the English Divorce Court — an institution 
which perhaps has its practical conveniences, but which 
in the ideal sphere is so hideous ; an institution which 



26 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

neither makes divorce impossible nor makes it decent, 
which allows a man to get rid of his wife, or a wife of her 
husband, but makes them drag one another first, for the 
public edification, through a mire of unutterable infamy, 
— when one looks at this charming institution, I say, with 
its crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its money 
compensations, this institution in which the gross unre- 
generate British Philistine has indeed stamped an image 
of himself, — one may be permitted to find the marriage 
theory of Catholicism refreshing and elevating. Or when 
Protestantism, in virtue of its supposed rational and in- 
tellectual origin, gives the law to criticism too magisteri- 
ally, criticism may and must remind it that its preten- 
sions, in this respect, are illusive and do it harm ; that 
the Reformation was a moral rather than an intellectual 
event ; that Luther's theory of grace no more exactly re- 
flects the mind of the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of 
history reflects it ; and that there is no more antecedent 
probability of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas be- 
ing agreeable to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the 
Ninth's. But criticism will not on that account forget 
the achievements of Protestantism in the practical and 
moral sphere ; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere. 
Protestantism, though in a blind and stumbling manner, 
carried forward the Renascence, while Catholicism threw 
itself violently across its path. 

I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting 
the want of ardor and movement which he now found 
amongst young men in this country with what he remem- 
bered in his own youth, twenty years ago. " What re- 
formers we were then ! " he exclaimed ; " What a zeal 
we had ! how we canvassed every institution in Church 
and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on first 
principles ! ^' He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual 
flagging, the lull which he saw. I am disposed rather to 
regard it as a pause in which the turn to a new mode of 
spiritual progress is being accomplished. Everything 
was long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, in 
inseparable connection with politics and practical life. 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 27 

We have pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing 
things in this connection, we have got all that can be got 
by so seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode 
of seeing them ; let us betake ourselves more to the 
serener life of the mind and spirit. This life, too, may 
have its excesses and dangers ; but they are not for us at 
present. Let us think of quietly enlarging our stock of 
true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as we get an idea 
or half an idea, be running out with it into the street, and 
trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, in the end, 
shape the world all the better for maturing a little. Per- 
haps in fifty years' time it will in the English House of 
Commons be an objection to an institution that it is an 
anomaly, and my friend the Member of Parliament will 
shudder in his grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather 
endeavor that in twenty years' time it may, in English 
literature, be an objection to a proposition that it is ab- 
surd. That will be a change so vast, that the imagination 
almost fails to grasp it. Ab integro sceclortcm nascitur 
ordo. 

If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism 
must take where politics and religion are concerned, it is 
because, where these burning matters are in question, it is 
most likely to go astray. I have wished, above all, to in- 
sist on the attitude which criticism should adopt towards 
things in general ; on its right tone and temper of mind. 
But then comes another question as to the subject-matter 
which literary criticism should most seek. Here, in 
general, its coursejsdetennined for it by the idea which is 
the law^ Jf_itsjb£ing_j;__the idea of a disinterested endeavor 
to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought f 
in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and : 
true ideas. By the very nature of things, as England is * 
not all the world, much of the best that is known and 
thought in the world cannot be of English growth, must 
be foreign ; by the nature of things, again, it is just this 
that we are least likely to know, while English thought is 
streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent 
care that we shall not be ignorant of its existence. The 



28 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

English critic of literature, therefore, must dwell much 
on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any part 
of it, which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for 
any reason specially likely to escape him. Again, judg- 
ing is often spoken of as the critic's one business, and so 
jin some sense it is ; but the judgment which almost in- 
' sensibly forms itself in a fairandT clear mind, along with 
frjesh. knowleiige, is the valu alil^ one ; and thus knowl- 
edge, and evgr fresh knowledge^__must be the critic's 
gi^atcoucern f o r himse lf. And it is by communicating 
fresh knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass 
along with it, — but insensibly, and in the second place, 
not the first, as a sort of companion and clue, not as an 
abstract lawgiver, — that the critic will generally do most 
good to his readers. Sometimes, no doubt, for the sake 
of establishing an author's place in literature, and his 
relation to a central standard (and if this is not done, how 
are we to get at our best in the ivorlcl f) criticismjnay: have 
to deal WTth_ajubject:-matter so_familjajjbhat fresh knowl- 
edge is out_of tlig^question, and thenjt must be all judg- 
ment ; ^.1} priririnjnjj^on flTif[ HfitRilAfl npplif.flt.ioTi of prin- 
ciples. Here_the_^^a^saf e^uai^d jLs_never lo let . oneself 
become abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively 
cbhscibushess of the truth of what one is saying, and, the 
moment this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. 
Still, under all circumstances, tjiis-jnei^, j n rl gm eirb. and 
applicjation-ol^irincipl ^s is^ in itself, njoLllie moat_satis- 
facto ry work t o__the_critic ; like mathematics, it is tauto- 
loglcaT, and cannot well give u^^JJ^e^fi-esh^learnin^, the 
sgnse of creative aa t£vIIyT~ 

But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of no prac- 
tical use to us whatever ; this criticism of yours is not 
what we have in our minds when we speak of criticism ; 
when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean critics 
and criticism of the current English literature of the day ; 
when you offer to tell criticism its function, it is to this 
criticism that we expect you to address yourself. I am 
sorry for it, for I am afraid I must disappoint these ex- 
pectations. I am bound by my own definition of criticism : 



FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 29 

a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the lest 
that is Jcnown and thought in the world. How much of 
current English literature comes into this '' best that is 
known and thought in the world ? " Not very much I 
fear ; certainly less, at this moment, than of the current 
literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am I to 
alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet the 
requirements of a number of practising English critics, 
who, after all, are free in their choice of a business ? 
That would be making criticism lend itself just to one of 
those alien practical considerations, which, I have said, 
are so fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those who 
have to deal with the mass — so much better disregarded — 
of current English literature, that they may at all events 
endeavor, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as they 
can, by the standard of the best that is known and thought 
in the world ; one may say, that to get anywhere near 
this standard, every critic should try and possess one ; 
great literature, at least, besides his own ; and the more \ 
unlike his own, the better. But, after all, the criticism I 
am really concerned with, — the criticism which alone can 
much help us for the future, the criticism which, through- 
out Europe, is at the present day meant, when so much 
stress is laid on the importance of criticism and the crit- 
ical spirit, — is a criticism which regards Europe as being, 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confed- 
eration, bound to a joint action and working to a common 
result ; and whose members have, for their proper out- 
fit, a knowledge of Greek, Eoman, and Eastern antiquity, 
and of one another. Special, local, and temporary ad- 
vantages being put out of account, that modern nation 
will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most 
progress, which most thoroughly carries out this pro- 
gram. And what is that but saying that we too, all of 
us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, 
shall make the more progress ? 

There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to take ? 
T5rhat_will nourish_iiS-JL[x_-grow th towards p erfection ? 
Thatis the questi on which, with the immense Seld of life 



30 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

and of literature lying before him, the c ritic has tg ,_an- 
swer ; for himself firstj__and afterwar ds" fo r other s^ . In 
this idea of the critic's busirTess the essays brought to- 
gether in the following pages have had their origin ; in 
this idea, widely different as are their subjects, they have, 
perhaps, their unity. 

I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to have 
the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and 
the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to criti- 
cism to have it ; but then criticisra-m«*t-b©-sin£ere, simple, 
flexiblejL^ardent, ever^ wldenin^^ its knowledge. ThjgjX-. 
it maj^ have^m no contemptible measure, a XoyM-^^fiJi^ 
^^reative activity ; a sense which a man of insight and 
conscience will prefer to what he might derive from a poor, 
starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some 
epochs no other creation is possible. 

Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity be- 
longs only to genuine creation ; in literature we must 
never forget that. But what true man of letters ever can 
forget it ? It is no such common matter for a gifted na- 
ture to come into possession of a current of true and living 
ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that 
we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of ^schylus 
and Shakespeare make us feel their pre-eminence. In an 
epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life of literature ; 
there is the promised land, towards which criticism can only 
beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, 
and we shall die in the wilderness : but to have desired 
to enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, per- 
haps, the best distinction among contemporaries ; it will 
certainly be the best title to esteem with posterity. 



n. 

THE LITERAEY INFLUENCE OF 
ACADEMIES. 

It is impossible to put down a book like the history of 
the French Academy, by Pellisson and D'Olivet, which 
M. Charles Livet has lately re-edited, without being led 
to reflect upon the absence, in our own country, of any 
institution like the French Academy, upon the probable 
causes of this absence, and upon its results. A thousand 
voices will be ready to tell us that this absence is a signal 
mark of our national superiority ; that it is in great part 
owing to this absence that the exhilarating words of Lord 
Macaulay, lately given to the world by his very clever 
nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true : '^ It 
may safely be said that the literature now extant in the 
English language is of far greater value than all the 
literature which three hundred years ago was extant in 
all the languages of the world together." I dare say this 
is so ; only, remembering Spinoza's maxim that the two 
great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness 
coming from self-conceit, I think it may do us good, in- 
stead of resting in our pre-eminence with perfect security, 
to look a little more closely why this is so, and whether 
it is so without any limitations. 

But first of all I must give a very few words to the out- 
ward history of the French Academy. About the year 
1629, seven or eight persons in Paris, fond of litera- 
ture, formed themselves into a sort of little club to meet 
at one another's houses and discuss literary matters. 
Their, meetings got talked of, and Cardinal Richelieu, 
then minister and all-powerful, heard of them. He him- 

31 



32 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

self had a noble passion for letters, and for all fine cul- 
ture ; he was interested by what he heard of the nascent 
society. Himself a man in the grand style, if ever man 
was, he had the insight to perceive what a potent instru- 
ment of the grand style was here to his hand. It was the 
beginning of a great century for France, the seventeenth ; 
men's minds were working, the French language was 
forming. Eichelieu sent to ask the members of the new 
society whether they would be willing to become a body 
with a public character, holding regular meetings. Not 
without a little hesitation, — for apparently they found 
themselves very well as they were, and these seven or 
eight gentlemen of a social and literary turn were not 
perfectly at their ease as to what the great and terrible 
minister could want with them, — they consented. The 
favors of a man like Eichelieu are not easily refused, 
whether they are honestly meant or no ; but this favor of 
Eichelieu's was meant quite honestly. The Parliament, 
however, had its doubts of this. The Parliament had 
none of Eichelieu's enthusiasm about letters and culture ; 
it was jealous of the apparition of a new public body in 
the State ; above all, of a body called into existence by 
Eichelieu. The King's letters-patent, establishing and 
authorizing the new society, were granted early in 1635 ; 
but, by the old constitution of France, these letters-patent 
required the verification of the Parliament. It was two 
years and a half — towards the autumn of 1637 — before the 
Parliament would give it ; and it then gave it only after 
pressing solicitations, and earnest assurances of the in- 
nocent intentions of the young Academy. Jocose people 
said that this society, with its mission to purify and em- 
bellish the language, filled with terror a body of lawyers 
like the French Parliament, the stronghold of barbarous 
jargon and of chicane. 

This improvement of the language was in truth the de- 
clared grand aim for the operations of the Academy. Its 
statutes of foundation, approved by Eichelieu before the 
royal edict establishing it was issued, say expressly : -^^The 
Academy's principal function shall be to work with all the 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 33 

care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to 
our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and 
capable of treating the arts and sciences." This zeal for 
making a nation's great instrument of thought, — its lan- 
guage, — correct and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign full of 
promise, — a weighty earnest of future power. It is said 
that Kichelieu had it in his mind that French should suc- 
ceed Latin in its general ascendency, as Latin had suc- 
ceeded Greek ; if it was so, even this wish has to some 
extent been fulfilled. But, at any rate, the ethical in- 
fluences of style in language, — its close relations, so often 
pointed out, with character, — are most important. 
Richelieu, a man of high culture, and, at the same time, 
of great character felt them profoundly ; and that he 
should have sought to regularize, strengthen, and per- 
petuate them by an institution for perfecting language, is 
alone a striking proof of his governing spirit and of his 
genius. 

This was not all he had in his mind, however. The 
new Academy, now enlarged to a body of forty members, 
and meant to contain all the chief literary men of France, 
was to be a literary tribunal. The works of its members 
were to be brought before it previous to publication, were 
to be criticized by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be pub- 
lished with its declared approbation. The works of other 
writers, not members of the Academy, might also, at the 
request of these writers themselves, be passed under the 
Academy's review. Besides this, in essays and discus- 
sions the Academy examined and judged works already 
published, whether by living or dead authors, and literary 
matters in general. The celebrated opinion on Corneille's 
Cid, delivered in 1637 by the Academy at Richelieu's 
urgent request, when this poem, which strongly occu- 
pied public attention, had been attacked by M. de Scu- 
d6ry, shows how fully Richelieu designed his new creation 
to do duty as a supreme court of literature, and how early 
it in fact began to exercise this function. One ^ who had 
known Richelieu declared, after the Cardinal's death, 
1 La Mesnardiere. 



34 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

that he had projected a yet greater institution than the 
Academy, a sort of grand European college of art, science, 
and literature, a Prytaneum, where the chief authors of 
all Europe should be gathered together in one central 
home, there to live in security, leisure and honor ; — that 
was a dream which will not bear to be pulled about too 
roughly. But the project of forming a high court of 
letters for France was no dream ; Eichelieu in great meas- 
ure fulfilled it. This is what the Academy, by its idea, 
really is ; this is what it has always tended to become ; 
this is what it has, from time to time, really been ; by be- 
ing, or tending to be this, far more than even by what it 
has done for the language, it is of such importance in 
France. To give the law, the tone to literature, and that 
tone a high one, is its business. '^ Richelieu meant it," 
says M. Sainte-Beuve, ^*to be a haiit jury,'' — a jury the 
most choice and authoritative that could be found on all 
important literary matters in question before the public ; 
to be, as it in fact became in tlie latter half of the eight- 
eenth century, ^^ a sovereign organ of opinion." *^ The 
duty of the Academy is," says M. Renan, *^ maintenir la 
delicatesse de V esprit frmiQais" — to keep the, fine quality 
of the French spirit unimpaired ; it represents a kind of 
maitrise en fait de hoii ton " — the authority of a recognized 
master in matters of tone and taste. ^' All ages," says 
M. Renan again, ^' have had their inferior literature ; but 
the great danger of our time is that this inferior lit- 
erature tends more and more to get the upper place. No 
one has the same advantage as the Academy for fighting 
against this mischief ; " the Academy, which, as he says 
elsewhere, has even special facilities, for *' creating a 
form of intellectual culture luhich shall imjjose itself on 
all around.'' M. Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, both 
of them, very keen-sighted critics ; and they show it sig- 
nally by seizing and putting so prominently forward this 
character of the French Academy. 

Such an effort to set up a recognized authority, impos- 
ing on us a high standard in matters of intellect and taste, 
has many enemies in human nature. We all of us like to 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 35 

go our own way, and not to be forced out of the atmos- 
phere of commonplace habitual to most of us ; — " was 
uns alUbdndigt,'' says Goethe, ^^ das Gememe." We like 
to be suffered to lie comfortably in the old straw of our 
habits, especially of our intellectual habits, even though 
this straw may not be very clean and fine. But if the 
effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature finds, as it 
does and must find, enemies in human nature, it finds 
also auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, says 
Cicero, of the lionestum, or good, which forms the matter 
on which officiiwi, or human duty, finds employment, one 
is the fixing of a modus and an oi^do, a measure and an 
order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our action, 
in order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself, 
and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man alone of living 
creatures, he says, goes feeling after '^ quid sit ordo, 
quid sid quod deceat, in facfis dictisque qui modus — the 
discovery of an order, a law of good taste, a measure for his 
words and actions." Other creatures submissively follow 
the law of their nature ; man alone has an impulse leading 
him to set up some other law to control the bent of his 
nature. 

This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as well 
as intellectual matters : and it is of moral matters that 
we are generally thinking when we affirm it. But it 
holds good as to intellectual matters too. Xow, probably, 
M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of Cicero in his mind 
when he made, about the French nation, the assertion I 
am going to quote ; but, for all that, the assertion leans 
for support, one may say, upon the truth conveyed in 
those words of Cicero, and wonderfully illustrates and 
confirms them. " In France," says M. Sainte-Beuve, 
'' the first consideration for us is not whether we are 
amused and pleased by a work of art or mind, nor is it 
whether we are touched by it. What we seek above all 
to learn is, whether lue ivere right in being amused with 
it, and in applauding it, and in being moved by it." 
Those are very remarkable words, and they are, I 
believe, in the main quite true. A Frenchman has, to a 



36 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

considerable degree, what one may call a conscience in 
intellectual matters ; he has an active belief that there is 
a right and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honor 
and obey the right, that he is disgraced by cleaving to the 
wrong. All the world has, or professes to have, this 
conscience in moral matters. The word conscience has 
become almost confined, in popular use, to the moral 
sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in 
the moral sphere, so far more common than in the in- 
tellectual sphere ; the livelier, in the moral sphere, this 
susceptibility is, the greater becomes a man's readiness to 
admit a high standard of action, an ideal authoritatively 
correcting his everyday moral habits ; here, such willing 
admission of authority is due to sensitiveness of con- 
science. And a like deference to a standard higher than 
one's own habitual standard in intellectual matters, a like 
respectful recognition of a superior ideal, is caused, in 
the intellectual sphere, by sensitiveness of intelligence. 
Those whose intelligence is quickest, openest, most sensi- 
tive, are readiest with this deference ; those whose intelli- 
gence is less delicate and sensitive are less disposed to it. 
Well, now we are on the road to see why the French have 
their Academy and we have nothing of the kind. 

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of 
our nation ? Not, certainly, an open and clear mind, 
not a quick and flexible intelligence. Our greatest ad- 
mirers would not claim for us that we have these in a pre- 
eminent degree ; they might say that we had more of them 
than our detractors gave us credit for ; but they would 
not assert them to be our essential characteristics. They 
would rather allege, as our chief spiritual characteristics, 
energy and honesty ; and, if we are judged favorably and 
positively, not invidiously and negatively, our chief char- 
acteristics are, no doubt, these : — energy and honesty, not 
an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelli- 
gence. Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence 
were very signal characteristics of the Athenian people 
in ancient times ; everybody will feel that. Openness 
of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 37 

characteristics of the French people in modern times ; at 
any rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared 
with us ; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel 
that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the 
French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either 
of them may have as a set-off against this ; all I want now 
to point out is that they have this, and that we have it in 
a much lesser degree. 

Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral 
sphere, but also in the intellectual and spiritual sphere, 
energy and honesty are most important and fruitful 
qualities ; that, for instance, of what we call genius 
energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a 
nation energy and honesty as its chief spiritual character- 
istics, — by refusing to it, as at all eminent characteristics, 
openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence, — we do 
not by any means, as some people might at first suppose, 
relegate its importance and its power of manifesting itself 
with effect from the intellectual to the moral sphere. We 
only indicate its probable special line of successful activity 
in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain imper- 
fections and failings to which, in this sphere, it will always 
be subject. Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and 
poetry is mainly an affair of genius ; therefore, a nation 
whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be emi- 
nent in poetry ; — and we have Shakespeare. Again, the 
highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive 
power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power 
exercised in poetry ; therefore, a nation whose spirit is 
characterized by energy may well be eminent in science ; — 
and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton : in the in- 
tellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And 
what that energy, which is the life of genius, above every- 
thing demands and insists upon, is freedom ; entire in- 
dependence of all authority, prescription, and routine, — 
the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore, a nation 
whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy, will not be 
very apt to set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed stand- 
ard, an authority, like an academy. By this it certainly 



38 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

escapes certain real inconveniences and dangers, and it 
can, at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably- 
splendid heights in poetry and science. On the other 
hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work are spe- 
cially the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of in- 
telligence. The form, the method of evolution, the pre- 
cision, the proportions, the relations of the parts to the 
whole, in an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them. 
And these are the elements of an intellectual work which 
are really most communicable from it, which can most be 
learued and adopted from it, which have, therefore, the 
greatest effect upon the intellectual performance of 
others. Even in poetry, these requisites are very impor- 
tant ; and the poetry of a nation, not eminent for the 
gifts on which they depend, will, more or less, suffer by 
this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are, after 
all, secondary, and energy is the first thing ; but in prose 
they are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, 
therefore, and in the routine of intellectual work gener- 
ally, a nation with no particular gifts for these will not 
be so successful. These are what, as I have said, can to 
a certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the 
free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate 
and maintain them, and, therefore, a nation with an 
eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. 
So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy 
and inventive genius, academies may be said to be ob- 
structive to energy and inventive genius, and, to this ex- 
tent, to the human spirit's general advance. But then 
this evil is so much compensated by the propagation, on a 
large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which 
an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally en- 
gender, genius itself, in the long run, so greatly finds its 
account in this propagation, and bodies like the French 
Academy have such power for promoting it, that the 
general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the 
whole, rather furthered than impeded by their existence. 
How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose ! 
how much better, in general, do the productions of its 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 39 

spirit show in the qualities of genius than in the qualities 
of intelligence ! One may constantly remark this in the 
work of individuals ; how much more striking, in general, 
does any Englishman, — of some vigor of mind, but by no 
means a poet, — seem in his verse than in his prose ! His 
verse partly suffers from his not being really a poet, partly, 
no doubt, from the very same defects which impair his prose, 
and he cannot express himself with thorough success in it. 
But how much more powerful a personage does he appear 
in it, by dint of feeling, and of originality and movement 
of ideas, than when he is writing prose ! With a French- 
man of like stamp, it is just the reverse : set him to write 
poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent ; set him to 
write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power 
of French literature is in its prose-writers, the power of 
English literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the cele- 
brated French poets depend wholly for their fame upon 
the qualities of intelligence which they exhibit, — qualities 
which are the distinctive support of prose ; many of the 
celebrated English prose-writers depend wholly for their 
fame upon the qualities of genius and imagination which 
they exhibit, — qualities which are the distinctive support 
of poetry. But, as I have said, the qualities of genius are 
less transferable than the qualities of intelligence ; less 
can be immediately learned and appropriated from their 
product ; they are less direct and stringent intellectual 
agencies, though they may be more beautiful and divine. 
Shakespeare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly 
more gifted writers than Corneille and his group ; but 
what was the sequel to this great literature, this literature 
of genius, as we may call it, stretching from Marlow to 
Milton ? What did it lead up to in English literature ? 
To our provincial and second-rate literature of the eight- 
eenth century. What on the other hand, was the sequel 
to the literature of the French ''great century," to this 
literature of intelligence, as by comparison with our Eliz- 
abethan literature, we may call it ; what did it lead up 
to ? To the French literature of the eighteenth century, 
one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual agencies 



40 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

that have ever existed, — the greatest European force of the 
eighteenth century. In science, again, we had Newton, a 
genius of the very highest order, a type of genius in science, 
if ever there was one. On the continent, as a sort of 
counterpart to Newton, there was Leibnitz ; a man, it 
seems to me (though on these matters I speak under cor- 
rection), of much less creative energy of genius, much less 
power of divination than Newton, but rather a man of 
admirable intelligence, a type of intelligence in science, if 
ever there was one. Well, and what did they each directly 
lead up to in science ? What was the intellectual genera- 
tion that sprang from each of them ? I only repeat what 
the men of science have themselves pointed out. The man 
of genius was continued by the English analysts of the 
eighteenth century, comparatively powerless and obscure 
followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence 
was continued by successors like Bernouilli, Euler, La- 
grange, and Laplace, the greatest names in modern mathe- 
matics. 

What I want the reader to see is, that the question as 
to the utility of academies to the intellectual life of a nation 
is not settled when we say, for instance : '^ Oh, we have 
never had an academy and yet we have, confessedly, a 
very great literature." It still remains to be asked : 
" What sort of a great literature ? a literature great in the 
special qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities 
of intelligence ? " If in the former, it is by no means 
sure that either our literature, or the general intellectual 
life of our nation, has got already, without academics, all 
that academics can give. Both the one and the other may 
very well be somewhat wanting in those qualities of intel- 
ligence out of a lively sense for which a body like the French 
Academy, as I have said, springs, and which such a body 
does a great deal to spread and confirm. Our literature, 
in spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short in 
form, method, precision, proportions, arrangement, — all 
of them, I have said, things where intelligence proper 
comes in. It may be comparatively weak in prose, that 
branch of literature where intelligence proper is, so to 



LITET?A"RY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 41 

speak, all in all. In this branch it may show many grave 
faults to which the want of a quick, flexible intelligence, 
and of the strict standard which such an intelligence tends 
to impose, makes it liable ; it may be full of haphazard, 
crudeness, provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blunder- 
ing. It may be a less stringent and effective intellectual 
agency, both upon our own nation and upon the world at 
large, than other literatures which show less genius, per- 
haps, but more intelligence. 

The right conclusion certainly is that we should try, so 
far as we can, to make up our shortcomings ; and that to 
this end, instead of ahvays fixing our thoughts upon the 
points in which our literature, and our intellectual life 
generally, are strong, we should from time to time, fix 
them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn to 
perceive clearly what we have to amend. What is our 
second great spiritual characteristic, — our honesty, — good 
for, if it is not good for this ? But it will, — I am sure it 
will, — more and more, as time goes on, be found good for 
this. 

Well, then, an institution like the French Academy, — 
an institution owing its existence to a national bent towards 
the things of the mind, towards culture, towards clearness, 
correctness, and propriety in thinking and speaking, and, 
in its turn, promoting this bent, — sets standards in a 
number of directions, and creates, in all these directions, 
a force of educated opinion, checking and rebuking those 
who fall below these standards, or who set them at nought. 
Educated opinion exists here as in France ; but in France 
the Academy serves as a sort of center and rallying-point 
to it, and gives it a force which it has not got here. Why 
is all ih.Q journey man-iuo7'k of literature, as I may call it, 
so much worse done here than it is in France ? I do not 
wish to hurt any one's feelings ; but surely this is so. 
Think of the difference between our books of reference and 
those of the French, between our biographical dictionaries 
(to take a striking instance) and theirs ; think of the dif- 
ference between the translations of the classics turned out 
for Mr. Bohn's library and those turned out for M, Nisard's 



42 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

collection ! As a general rule, hardly any one amongst us, 
who knows French and German well, would use an English 
book of reference when he could get a French or German 
one ; or would look at an English prose translation 
of an ancient author when he could get a French or Ger- 
man one. It is not th^t there do not exist in England, as 
in France, a number of people perfectly well able to discern 
what is good, in these things, from what is bad, and pre- 
ferring what is good ; but they are isolated, they form no 
powerful body of opinion, they are not strong enough to 
set a standard, up to which even the journeyman-work of 
literature must be brought, if it is to be vendible. Igno- 
rance and charlatanism in work of this kind are always 
trying to pass off their wares as excellent, and to cry down 
criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over-fastidious 
minority ; they easily persuade the multitude that this is 
so when the minority is scattered about as it is here ; not 
so easily when it is banded together as in the French 
Academy. So, again, with freaks in dealing with language ; 
certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and 
beauty of language ; and how far more common they are 
with us than with the French ! To take a very familiar 
instance. Every one has noticed the way in which the 
Times chooses to spell the word '^ diocese ; " it always 
spells it diocese, ^ deriving it, I suppose, from Zeus and 
ce7isus. The Journal des Debats might just as well write 
'* diocess " instead of ** diocese," but imagine the Journal 
des Debats doing so ! Imagine an educated Frenchman 
indulging himself in an orthographical antic of this sort, 
in face of the grave respect with which the Academy and 
its dictionary invest the French language ! Some people 
will say these are little things ; they are not ; they are of 
bad example. They tend to spread the baneful notion 
that there is no such thing as a high, correct standard in 
intellectual matters ; that every one may as well take his 
own way ; they are at variance with the severe discipline 

1 The Times has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and 
adopted the ordinary one. 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 43 

necessary for all real culture ; they confirm us in habits of 
wilfulness and eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and 
damage our credit with serious people. The late Mr. 
Donaldson was certainly a man of great ability, and I, 
who am not an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his 
Jashar : but let the reader observe the form which a for- 
eign Orientalist's judgment of it naturally takes. M. 
Renan calls it a tentative maUietireuse, a failure, in short ; 
this it may be, or it may not be ; I am no judge. But he 
goes on : *^ It is astonishing that a recent article '' (in a 
French periodical, he means) ^' should have brought for- 
ward as the last word of German exegesis a work like this, 
composed by a doctor of the University of Cambridge, 
and universally condemned by German critics." You see 
what he means to imply : an extravagance of this sort 
could never have come from Germany, where there is a 
great force of critical opinion controlling a learned man's 
vagaries, and keeping him straight ; it comes from the 
native home of intellectual eccentricity of all kinds, ^ — 
from England, from a doctor of the University of Cam- 
bridge : — and 1 dare say he would not expect much better 
things from a doctor of the University of Oxford. Again, 
after speaking of what Germany and France have done 
for the history of Mahomet: '* America and England," 
M. Renan goes on, *' have also occupied themselves with 
Mahomet." He mentions Washington Irving's Life of 
MaJiomet, which does not, he says, evince much of an his- 
torical sense, a se^itiment liistorique fort eleve ; ^^but," he 
proceeds, '^this book shows a real progress, when one 
thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles Forster published two 
thick volumes, which enchanted the English reverends, 
to make out that Mahomet was the little horn of the he- 
goat that figures in the eighth chapter of Daniel, and that 
the Pope was the great horn. Mr. Forster founded on this 

1 A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan's lan- 
guage implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a nuance 
of expression, in M. Renan's language, which does imply this ; 
but, I confess, the only person who can really settle such a 
:iuestion is M. Renan himself. 



44 ' ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

ingenious parallel a whole pliilosophy of history, accord- 
ing to which the Pope represented the AVestern corruption 
of Christianity, and Mahomet the Eastern ; thence the 
striking resemblances between Mahometanism and Pop- 
ery/' And in a note M. Eenan adds : ''This is the same 
Mr. Charles Forster who is the author of a mystification 
about the Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he declares he 
finds the primitive language.^' As much as to say : ''It 
is an Englishman, be surprised at no extravagance." If 
these innuendoes had no ground, and were made in hatred 
and malice, they would not be worth a moment's attention ; 
but they come from a grave Orientalist, on his own sub- 
ject, and they point to a real fact ; — the absence, in this 
country, of any force of educated literary and scientific 
opinion, making aberrations like those of the author of 
The One Primeval Language out of the question. Not 
only the author of such aberrations, often a very clever 
man, suffers by the want of check, by the not being kept 
straight, and spends force in vain on a false road, which, 
under better discipline, he might have used with profit 
on a true one ; but all his adherents, both " reverends " 
and others, suffer too, and the general rate of information 
and judgment is in this way kept low. 

In a production which we have all been reading lately, 
a production stamped throughout with a literary quality 
very rare in this country, and of which I shall have a 
word to say presently — urhanity ; in this production, the 
work of a man never to be named by any son of Oxford 
without sympathy, a man who alone in Oxford of his 
generation, alone of many generations, conveyed to us in 
his genius that same charm, that same ineffable sentiment 
which this exquisite place itself conveys, — I mean Dr. 
Newman, — an expression is frequently used which is more 
common in theological than in literary language, but 
which seems to me fitted to be of general service ; the note 
of so and so, the note of catholicity, the note of antiquity, 
the note of sanctity, and so on. Adopting this expressive 
word, I say that in the bulk of the intellectual work of a 
nation which has no center, no intellectual metropolis like 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 45 

an academy, like M. Sainte-Benve's '^ sovereign organ of 
opinion," like M. Kenan's ^' recognized authority in mat- 
ters of tone and taste," — there is observable a note of 
provinciality. Now to get rid of provinciality is a certain 
stage of culture ; a stage the positive result of which we 
must not make of too much importance, but which is, 
nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the 
platform where alone the best and highest intellectual 
work can be said fairly to begin. Work done after men 
have reached this platform is classical ; and that is the 
only work which, in the long rnn, can stand. All the 
scoricB in the work of men of great genius who have not 
lived on this platform are due to their not having lived on 
it. Genius raises them to it by moments, and the portions 
of their work which are immortal are done at these mo- 
ments ; but more of it would have been immortal if they 
had not reached this platform at moments only, if they 
had had the culture which makes men live there. 

The less a literature has felt the influence of a supposed 
center of correct information, correct judgment, correct 
taste, the more we shall find in it this note of provinciality. 
I have shown the note of provinciality as caused by re- 
moteness from a center of correct information. Of course 
the note of provinciality from the want of a center of cor- 
rect taste is still more visible, and it is also still more com- 
mon. For here great — even the greatest — powers of mind 
most fail a man. Great powers of mind will make him 
inform himself thoroughly, great powers of miud will 
make him think profoundly, even with ignorance and 
platitude all round him ; but not even great powers of 
mind will keep his taste and style perfectly sound and 
sure, if he is left too much to himself, with no '^ sovereign 
organ of opinion " in these matters near him. Even men 
like Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Take this pas- 
sage from Taylor's funeral sermon on Lady Carbery : — 

** So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing with 
a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the Jlscus, the 
great exchequer of the sea, a tribute large and full ; and 
hard by it a little brook, skipping and making a noise 



46 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

upon its unequal and neighbor bottom ; and after all its 
talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit 
no more than the revenues of a little cloud or a contempti- 
ble vessel : so have I sometimes compared the issues of her 
religion to the solemnities and famed outsides of another's 
piety." 

That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, the 
genius in it is undeniable, I should say, for my part, that 
genius, the ruling divinity of poetry, had been too busy in 
it, and intelligence, the ruling divinity of prose, not busy 
enough. But can any one, with the best models of style 
in his head, help feeling the note of provinciality there, 
the want of simplicity, the want of measure, the want of 
just the qualities that make prose classical ? If he does 
not feel what I mean, let him place beside the passage of 
Taylor this passage from the Panegyric of St. Paul, by 
Taylor's contemporary, Bossuet : — 

*' II ira, cet ignorant dans I'art de bien dire, avec cette 
locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent Tetranger il ira 
en cette Grece polie, la mere des philosophes et des 
orateurs ; et malgre la resistance du monde, il y etablira 
plus d'Eglises que Platon n'y a gagne de disciples par cette 
eloquence qu'on a crue divine." 

There we have prose without the note of provinciality — 
classical prose, prose of the center. 

Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, as I 
think ; take expressions like this : — 

''Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes 
when they push, they drive, by the point of their bayonets, 
their slaves, blindfolded, indeed, no worse than their 
lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow 
down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose." 

Or this :— 

'' They used it " (the royal name) "as a sort of navel- 
string, to nourish their unnatural offspring from the 
bowels of royalty itself. Now that the monster can pur- 
vey for its own subsistence, it will only carry the mark 
about it, as a token of its having torn the womb it came 
from." • 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 47 

Or this :— 

"Without one natural pang, he" (Roussean) '^ casts 
away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his 
disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital 
of foundlings." 

Or this :— 

" I confess I never liked this continual talk of resistance 
and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme 
medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders 
the habit of society dangerously valetudinary ; it is taking 
periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and swallowing 
down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of 
liberty." 

I say that is extravagant prose ; prose too much suffered 
to indulge its caprices ; prose at too great a distance from 
the center of good taste ; prose, in short, with the note of 
provinciality. People may reply, it is rich and imagina- 
tive ; yes, that is just it, it is Asiatic prose, as the ancient 
critics would have said ; prose somewhat barbarously rich 
and overloaded. But the true prose is Attic prose. 

Well, but Addison's prose is Attic prose. Where, then, 
it may be asked, is the note of provinciality in Addison ? 
I answer, in the commonplace of his ideas. ^ This is a 
matter worth remarking. Addison claims to take leading 
rank as a moralist. To do that, you must have ideas of 

1 A critic says this is paradoxical, and urges that many second- 
rate French academicians have uttered the most commonplace 
ideas possible. I agree that many second-rate French academi- 
cians have uttered the most commonplace ideas possible ; but 
Addison is not a second-rate man. He is a man of the order, I 
will not say of Pascal, but at any rate of La Bruyere and Vauve- 
nargues ; why does he not equal them ? I say because of the 
medium in which he finds himself, the atmosphere in which he 
lives and works ; an atmosphere which tells unfavorably, or 
rather tends to tell unfavorably (for that is the truer way of 
putting it) either upon style or else upon ideas ; tends to make 
even a man of great ability either a Mr. Carlyle or else a Lord 
Macaulay. 

It is to be observed, however, that Lord Macaulay's style has 
in its turn suffered by his failure in ideas, and this cannot be 
said of Addison's. 



48 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the first order on your subject — the best ideas, at any rate, 
attainable in your time — as well as to be able to express 
them in a perfectly sound and sure style. Else you show 
your distance from the center of ideas by your matter ; 
you are provincial by your matter, though you may not be 
provincial by your style. It is comparatively a small matter 
to express oneself well, if one will be content with not ex- 
pressing much, with expressing only trite ideas ; the prob- 
lem is to express new and profound ideas in a perfectly 
sound and classical style. He is the true classic, in every 
age, who does that. Now Addison has not, on his subject 
of morals, the force of ideas of the moralists of the first 
class — the classical moralists ; he has not the best ideas 
attainable in or about his time, and which were, so to 
speak, in the air then, to be seized by the finest spirits ; 
he is not to be compared for power, searchingness, or del- 
icacy of thought to Pascal or La Bruyere or Vauven ar- 
gues ; he is rather on a level, in this respect, with a man 
like Marmontel. Therefore, I say, he has the note of pro- 
vinciality as a moralist ; he is provincial by his matter, 
though not by his style. 

To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, 
writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious faith. 



** Those who delight in reading books of controversy do 
very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled habit of faith. 
The doubt which was laid revives again, and shows itself 
in new difficulties ; and that generally for this reason, — 
because the mind, which is perpetually tossed in con- 
troversies and disputes, is apt to forget the reasons which 
had once set it at rest, and to be disquieted with any 
former perplexity when it appears in a new shape, or is 
started by a different hand." 

It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in 
lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objection ; 
but, in my turn, I say that the idea expressed is perfectly 
trite and barren, and that it is a note of provinciality in 
Addison, in a man whom a nation puts forward as one of 
its great moralists, to have no profounder and more strik- 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 49 

iiig idea to produce on this great subject. Compare, on 
the same subject, these words of a moralist really of the 
first order, really at the center by his ideas, — Joubert : — 

'' L'experience de beaucoup d'opinions donne a I'esprit 
beaucoup de flexibilite et Taffermit dans celles qu'il croit 
les meilleures." 

With what a flash of light that touches the subject ! 
how it sets us thinking ! What a genuine contribution to 
moral science it is ! 

In short, where there is no center like an academy, if 
you have genius and powerful ideas, you are apt not to 
have the best style going ; if you have precision of style 
and not genius, you are apt not to have the best ideas 
going. 

The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value of 
its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by which to 
try them. Or rather, for want of such a standard, it gives 
one idea too much prominence at the expense of others ; it 
orders its ideas amiss ; it is hurried away by fancies ; it likes 
and dislikes too passionately, too exclusively. Its admira- 
tion weeps hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams 
at the mouth. So we get the ertiptive and the aggressive 
manner in literature ; the former prevails most in our criti- 
cism, the latter in our newspapers. For, not having the 
lucidity of a large and centrally placed intelligence, the pro- 
vincial spirit has not its graciousness ; it does not persuade, 
it makes war ; it has not urbanity, the tone of the city, of 
the center, the tone which always aims at a spiritual and in- 
tellectual effect, and not excluding the use of banter, never 
disjoins banter itself from politeness, from felicity. But 
the provincial tone is more violent, and seems to aim 
rather at an effect upon the blood and senses than upon 
the spirit and intellect ; it loves hard-hitting rather than 
persuading. The newspaper, with its party spirit, its 
thorough-goingness, its resolute avoidance of shades and 
distinctions, its short, highly-charged, heavy-shotted ar- 
ticles, its style so unlike that style lenis mi7iimeque per- 
finax — easy and not too violently insisting, — which the 
ancients so much admired, is its true literature ; the pro- 



60 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

vincial spirit likes in the newspaper just what makes the 
newspaper such bad food for it, — just what made Goethe 
say, when he was pressed hard about the immorality of 
Byron's poems, that, after all, they were not so immoral 
as the newspapers. The French talk of the hrutaliU cles 
joitrnaux anglais. What strikes them comes from the 
necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper-writing not 
being checked in England by any center of intelligent 
and urbane spirit, but rather stimulated by coming in 
contact with a provincial spirit. Even a newspaper 
like the Saturday Review, that old friend of all of us, 
a newspaper expressly aiming at an immunity from 
the common newspaper-spirit, aiming at being a sort of 
organ of reason, — and, by thus aiming, it .merits great 
gratitude and has done great good, — even the Saturday 
Revieio, replying to some foreign criticism on our precau- 
tions against invasion, falls into a strain of this kind : — 

"To do this" (to take these precautions) "seems to us 
eminently worthy of a great nation, and to talk of it as 
unworthy of a great nation, seems to us eminently worthy 
of a great fool.'' 

There is what the French mean when they talk of the 
hrutalite des journaux anglais ; there is a style certainly 
as far removed from urbanity as possible, — a style with 
what I call the note of provinciality. And the same note 
may not unf requently be observed even in the ideas of this 
newspaper, full as it is of thought and cleverness : certain 
ideas allowed to become fixed ideas, to prevail too abso- 
lutely. I will not speak of the immediate present, but, to 
go a little while back, it had the critic who so disliked the 
Emperor of the French ; it had the critic who so disliked 
the subject of my present remarks — academies ; it had the 
critic who was so fond of the German element in our 
nation, and, indeed, everywhere ; who ground his teeth 
if one said Charlemagne instead of Cliarles the Great, and, 
in short, saw all things in Teutonism, as Malebranche 
saw all things in God. Certainly any one may fairly find 
faults in the Emperor Napoleon or in academies, and merit 
in the German element ; but it is a note of the provincial 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 51 

spirit not to hold ideas of this kind a little more easily, 
to be so devoured by them, to suffer them to become 
crotchets. 

In England there needs a miracle of genius like Shake- 
speare's to produce balance of mind, and a miracle of 
intellectual delicacy like Dr. ]^ewman's to produce ur- 
banity of style. How prevalent all round us is the want 
of balance of mind and urbanity of style ! How much, 
doubtless, it is to be found in ourselves, — in each of us ! 
but, as human nature is constituted, every one can see it 
clearest in his contemporaries. There, above all, we 
should consider it, because they and we are exposed to the 
same influences ; and it is in the best of one's contempo- 
raries that it is most worth considering, because one then 
most feels the harm it does, when one sees what they 
would be without it. Think of the difference between 
Mr. Euskin exercising his genius, and Mr. Kuskin exer- 
cising his intelligence ; consider the truth and beauty of 
this : — 

'^ Go out, in the spring-time, among the meadows that 
slope from the shores of the Swiss' lakes to the roots of 
their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller 
gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep 
and free ; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, 
beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom, 
— paths that forever droop and rise over the green banks 
and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to 
the blue water studded here and there with new-mown 
heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness, — look up 
towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting 
green roll silently into their long inlets among the shad- 
ows of the pines " 

There is what the genius, the feeling, the temperament 
in Mr. Ruskin, the original and incommunicable part, has 
to do with ; and how exquisite it is ! All the critic could 
possibly suggest, in the way of objection, would be, per- 
haps, that Mr. Euskin is there trying to make prose do 
more than it can perfectly do ; that what he is there 
attempting he will never, except in poetry, be able to 



52 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

accomplish to liis own entire satisfaction : but he accom- 
plishes so much that the critic may well hesitate to sug- 
gest even this. Place beside this charming passage an- 
other, — a passage about Shakespeare's names, where the 
intelligence and judgment of Mr. Ruskin, the acquired, 
trained, communicable part in him, are brought into 
play, — and see the diiference : — 

** Of Shakespeare's names I will afterwards speak at more 
length ; they are curiously — often barbarously — mixed 
out of various traditions and languages. Three of the 
clearest in meaning have been already noticed. Des- 
demona — 'duffdatixovia,' mise7YiMe fortime — is also plain 
enough. Othello is, I believe, Hhe careful;' all the 
calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and 
error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, 
*serviceableness,' the true, lost wife of Hamlet, is marked 
as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes ; 
and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that 
brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness 
is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy : — ' A 
ministeriyig angel shall my sister be, when thou liest 
howling.' Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way 
with * homely,' the entire event of the tragedy turning 
on betrayal of home duty. Hermione {^pp^o), * pillar- 
like' (^ el^o? £/£ XP^<^^^ 'AippodiT-Q^) ; Titania (jtrijvrj), 'the 
queen ; ' Benedick and Beatrice, ' blessed and blessing ; ' 
Valentine and Proteus, ' enduring or strong ' (valens), 
and 'changeful.' lago and lachimo have evidently the 
same root — probably the Spanish lago, Jacob, ' the sup- 
planter.'" 

Now, really, what a piece of extravagance all that is ! I 
will not say that the meaning of Shakespeare's names (1 
put aside the question as to the correctness of Mr. Rus- 
kin's etymologies) has no effect at all, may be entirely 
lost sight of ; but to give it that degree of prominence is 
to throw the reins to one's whim, to forget all moderation 
and proportion, to lose the balance of one's mind alto- 
gether. It is to show in one's criticism, to the highest 
excess, the note of provinciality. 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 53 

Again there is Mr. Palgrave, certainly endowed with a 
very fine critical tact : his Golden Treasury abundantly 
proves it. The plan of arrangement which he devised 
for that work, the mode in which he followed his plan 
ont, nay, one might even say, merely the juxtaposition, 
in pursuance of it, of two such pieces as those of Words- 
worth and Shelley which form the 285th and 286th in his 
collection, show a delicacy of feeling in these matters 
which is quite indisputable and very rare. And his notes 
are full of remarks which show it too. All the more 
striking, conjoined with so much justness of perception, 
are certain freaks and violences in Mr. Palgrave's criti- 
cism, mainly imputable, I think, to the critic's isolated 
position in this country, to his feeling himself too much 
left to take 'his own way, too much without any central 
authority representing high culture and sound judgment, 
by which he may be, on the one hand, confirmed as against 
the ignorant, on the other, held in respect when he him- 
self is inclined to the liberties. I mean such things as 
this note on Milton's line, — 

" The great Emathian conqueror bade spare "... 

''When Thebes was destroyed, Alexander ordered the 
house of Pindar to be spared. He was as incapable of ap- 
preciating the poet as Louis XIV, of appreciating Racine ; 
hut even the narrow and harharian mind of Alexander 
could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage 
topoet7'y" A note like that I call a freak or a violence ; 
if this disparaging view of Alexander and Louis XIV., 
so nnlike the current view, is' wrong, — if the current 
view is, after all, the truer one of them, — the note is a 
freak. But, even if its disparaging view is right, the 
note is a violence ; for, abandoning the true mode of in- 
tellectual action — persuasion, the instilment of conviction, 
— it simply astounds and irritates the hearer by contradict- 
ing without a word of proof or preparation, his fixed and 
familiar notions ; and this is mere violence. In either 
case, the fitness, the measure, the centrality, which is 



54 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the soul of all good criticism, is lost, and the note of 
provinciality shows itself. 

Thus, in the famous Handhooh, marks of a fine 
power of perception are everywhere discernible, but 
so, too, are marks of the want of sure balance, of the 
check and support afforded by knowing one speaks 
before good and severe judges. When Mr. Palgrave dis- 
likes a thing, he feels no pressure constraining him either 
to try his dislike closely or to express it moderately ; he 
does not mince matters, he gives his dislike all its own 
way ; both his judgments and his style would gain if he 
were under more restraint. *' The style which has filled 
London with the dead monotony of Gower or Harley 
Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, 
and Kensington ; which has pierced Paris and Madrid 
with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada 
de Toledo." He dislikes the architecture of the Rue 
Rivoli, and he puts it on a level with the architecture of 
Belgravia and Gower Street ; he lumps them all together 
in one condemnation, he loses sight of the shade, the dis- 
tinction, which is everything here ; the distinction, namely, 
that the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, 
splendor, pleasure, — unworthy things, perhaps, to express 
alone and for their own sakes, but it expresses them ; 
whereas the architecture of Gower Street and Belgravia 
merely expresses the impotence of the architect to express 
anything. Then, as to style : '' sculpture which stands in 
a contrast with Woolner hardly more shameful than divert- 
ing." . . . ^^ passing from Davy or Faraday to the art of 
the mountebank or the science of the spirit-rapper." . . . 
*' it is the old, old story with Marochetti, the frog trying 
to blow himself out to bull dimensions. He may puff and 
he puffed, but he will never do it." We all remember 
that shower of amenities on poor M. Marochetti. Now, 
here Mr. Palgrave himself enables us to form a contrast 
which lets us see just what the presence of an academy 
does for style ; for he quotes a criticism by M. Gustave 
Planche on this very M. Marochetti. M. Gustave Planche 
was a critic of the very first order, a man of strong opin- 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 55 

ions, which he expressed with severity ; he, too, condemns 
M. Marochetti's work, and Mr. Palgrave calls him as a 
witness to back what he has himself said ; certainly Mr. 
Palgrave^s translation will not exaggerate M. Planche's 
urbanity in dealing with M. Marochetti, but, even in this 
translation, see the difference in sobriety, in measure, 
between the critic writing in Paris and the critic writing 
in London: — 

"These conditions are so elementary, that I am at a 
perfect loss to comprehend how M. Marochetti has neg- 
lected them. There are soldiers here like the leaden 
playthings of the nursery : it is almost impossible to guess 
whether there is a body beneath the dress. We have here 
no question of style, not even of grammar ; it is nothing 
beyond mere matter of the alphabet of art. To break 
these conditions is the same as to be ignorant of spelling." 

That is really more formidable criticism than Mr. Pal- 
grave's, and yet in how perfectly temperate a style ! M. 
Planche's advantage is, that he feels himself to be speak- 
ing before competent judges, that there is a force of cul- 
tivated opinion for him to appeal to. Therefore, he must 
not be extravagant, and he need not storm ; he must 
satisfy the reason and taste, — that is his business. Mr. 
Palgrave, on the other hand, feels himself to be speaking 
before a promiscuous multitude, with the few good judges 
so scattered through it as to be powerless ; therefore, he 
has no calm confidence and no self-control ; he relies on 
the strength of his lungs ; he knows that big words impose 
on the mob, and that, even if he is outrageous, most of his 
audience are apt to be a great deal more so. ^ 

Again, the first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake's Invasion 
of the Crimea were certainly among the most successful 
and renowned English books of our time. Their style 
was one of the most renowned things about them, "and yet 
how conspicuous a fault in Mr. Kinglake^s style is this 

1 When I wrote this I had before me the first edition of Mr. 
Palgrave's Handbook. I am bound to say that in the second 
edition much strong language has been expunged, and what 
remains, softened. 



56 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

over-charge of which I have been speaking ! Mr. James 
Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, says, I believe, 
that the highest achievement of the human intellect is 
what he calls *'a good editorial/' This is not quite so; 
but, if it were so, on what a height would these two vol- 
umes by Mr. Kinglake stand ! I have already spoken of 
the Attic and the Asiatic styles ; besides these, there is 
the Corinthian style. That is the style for '^ a good edi- 
torial/' and Mr. Kinglake has really reached perfection 
in it. It has not the warm glow, blithe movement, and 
soft pliancy of life, as the Attic style has ; it has not the 
over-heavy richness and encumbered gait of the Asiatic 
style ; it has glitter without warmth, rapidity without 
ease, effectiveness without charm. Its characteristic is, 
that it has no soul ; all it exists for, is to get its ends, to 
make its points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired, 
to triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense of 
soul, simplicity, and delicacy ; a style so little studious 
of the charm of the great models ; so far from classic 
truth and grace, must surely be said to have the note of 
provinciality. Yet Mr. Kinglake's talent is a really em- 
inent one, and so in harmony with our intellectual habits 
and tendencies, that to the great bulk of English people, 
the faults of his style seem its merits ; all the more need- 
ful that criticism should not be dazzled by them. 

We must not compare a man of Mr. Kinglake's literary 
talent with French writers like M. de Bazancourt. We 
must compare him with M. Thiers. And what a superior- 
ity in style has M. Thiers from being formed in a good 
school, with severe traditions, wholesome restraining 
influences ! Even in this age of Mr. James Gordon Ben- 
nett, his style has nothing Corinthian about it, its light- 
ness and brightness make it almost Attic. It is not quite 
Attic, however ; it has not the infallible sureness of Attic 
taste. Sometimes his head gets a little hot with the 
fumes of patriotism, and then he crosses the line, he loses 
perfect measure, he declaims, he raises a momentary smile. 
France condemned * a etre Teffroi du monde dont elle 
pourrait etre V amour, ^ — Caesar, whose exquisite simplicity 



LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 57 

M. Thiers so much admires, would not have written hke 
that. There is, if I may be allowed to say so, the slight- 
est possible touch of fatuity in such language, — of that 
failure in good sense which comes from too warm a self- 
satisfaction. But compare this language with Mr. King- 
lake's Marshal St. Arnaud — '* dismissed from the presence " 
of Lord Kaglan or Lord Stratford, '^^ cowed and pressed 
down'' under their ^' stern reproofs," or under **the 
majesty of the great Elchi's Canning brow and tight, 
merciless lips ! " The failure in good sense and good 
taste there reaches far beyond what the French mean by 
fatuity ; they would call it by another word, a word 
expressing blank defect of intelligence, a word for which 
we have no exact equivalent in English, — hete. It is 
the difference between a venial, momentary, good-tem- 
pered excess, in a man of the world, of an amiable and 
social weakness, — vanity ; and a serious, settled, fierce, 
narrow, provincial misconception of the whole relative 
value of one's own things and the things of others. So 
baneful to the style of even the cleverest man may be the 
total want of checks. 

In all I have said, I do not pretend that the examples 
given prove my rule as to the influence of academies ; they 
only illustrate it. Examples in plenty might very likely 
be found to set against them ; the truth of the rule de- 
pends, no doubt, on whether, the balance of all the examples 
is in its favor or not ; but actually to strike this balance 
is always out of the question. Here, as everywhere else, 
the rule, the idea, if true, commends itself to the judicious, 
and then the examples make it clearer still to them. This 
is the real use of examples, and this alone is the purpose 
which I have meant mine to serve. There is also another 
side to the whole question, — as to the limiting and prejudi- 
cial operation which academies may have ; but this side of 
the question it rather behoves the French, not us, to 
study. 

The reader will ask for some practical conclusion about 
the establishment of an Academy in this country, and per- 
haps I shall hardly give him the one he expects. But 



58 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

nations have their own modes of acting, and these modes 
are not easily changed ; they are even consecrated, when 
great things have been done in them. When a literature 
has produced Shakespeare and Milton, when it has even 
produced Barrow and Burke, it cannot well abandon its 
traditions ; it can hardly begin, at this late time of day, 
with an institution like the French Academy. I think 
academies with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the 
various lines of intellectual work, — academies like that of 
Berlin, for instance, — we with time may, and probably 
shall, establish. And no doubt they will do good ; no 
doubt the presence of such influential centers of correct 
information will tend to raise the standard amongst us for 
what I have called the journey ma7i-2Vork of literature, and 
to free us from the scandal of such biographical dictiona- 
ries as Chalmers's, or such translations as a recent one 
of Spinoza, or perhaps, such philological freaks as Mr. 
Porster's about the one primeval language. But an acad- 
emy quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of 
the highest literary opinion, a recognized authority in 
matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, 
and perhaps we ought not to wish to have it. But then 
every one amongst us with any turn for literature will do 
well to remember to what shortcomings and excesses, which 
such an academy tends to correct, we are liable ; and the 
more liable, of course, for not having it. He will do well 
constantly to try himself in respect of these, steadily to 
widen his culture, severely to check in himself the pro- 
vincial spirit ; and he will do this the better the more he 
keeps in mind that all mere glorification by ourselves of 
ourselves or our literature, in the strain of what, at the 
beginning of these remarks I quoted from Lord Macaulay, 
is both vulgar, and, besides being vulgar retarding. 



m. 

MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

I WILL not presume to say that I now know the French 
language well ; but at a time when I knew it even less well 
than at present, — some fifteen years ago, — I remember pes- 
tering those about me with this sentence, the rhythm of 
which had lodged itself in my head, and which, with the 
strangest pronunciation possible, I kept perpetually de- 
claiming : '^ Les clieux jaloux out enfoui quelque part les 
temoignages de la descendance des choses ; mais au lord de 
quel Ocean ont-ils roule la pierre qui les couvre, 6 
Macaree ! " 

These words came from a short composition called the 
Centaur, of which the author, Georges-Maurice de Guerin, 
died in the year 1839, at the age of twenty-eight, without 
having published anything. In 1840, Madame Sand 
brought out the Centaur in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
with a short notice of its author, and a few extracts from 
his letters. A year or two afterwards she reprinted these 
at the end of a volume of her novels ; and there it was 
that I fell in with them. I was so much struck with the 
Centaur that I waited anxiously to hear something more 
of its author, and of what he had left ; but it was not till 
the other day — twenty years after the first publication 
of the Centaur in the Revue des Deux Mo7ides, that my 
anxiety was satisfied. At the end of 1860 appeared two 
volumes with the title Maurice de Guerin, Reliquice, con- 
taining the Centaur, several pooms of Guerin, his journals, 
and a number of his letters, collected and edited by a de- 
voted friend, M. Trebntien, and preceded by a notice of 
Guerin by the first of living critics, M. Sainte-Beuve. 

59 



60 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power ; 
by which I mean, not a power of drawing out in black and 
white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, but 
the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a 
wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of 
our relations with them. When this sense is awakened in 
us, as to objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in 
contact with the essential nature of those objects, to be 
no longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but to have 
their secret, and to be in harmony with them ; and this 
feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. Poetry, 
indeed, interprets in another way besides this ; but one of 
its two ways of interpreting, of exercising its highest 
power, is by awakening this sense in us. I will not now 
inquire whether this sense is illusive, whether it can be 
proved not to be illusive, whether it does absolutely make 
us possess the real nature of things ; all I say is, that 
poetry can awaken it in us, and that to awaken it is one 
of the highest powers of poetry. The interpretations of 
science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the 
interpretations of poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited 
faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or 
Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of 
animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, 
who makes us participate in their life ; it is Shakespeare, 
with his 

" daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; " 

it is Wordsworth, with his 

" voice .... heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides ; " 

it is Keats, with his 

" moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores ; ** 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 61 

it is Chateaubriand, with his, ^' cime indeterminee des 
forets ; " it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree : 
'* Cette ecorce hlaiiche, lisse et crevassee ; cetfe tige agreste; 
ces branches qui sHnclineJit vers la te7're; la mohiliU des 
feuilles, et tout cet abandon, simplicite de la nature, attitude 
des deserts.^^ 

Eminent manifestations of this magical power of poetry 
are very rare and very precious ; the compositions of 
Guerin manifest it, I think, in singular eminence. Not 
his poems, strictly so called, — his verse, — so much as his 
prose ; his poems in general take for their vehicle that 
favorite meter of French poetry, the Alexandrine ; and, 
in my judgment, I confess they have thus, as compared 
with his prose, a great disadvantage to start with. In 
prose, the character of the vehicle for the composer's 
thoughts is not determined beforehand ; every composer 
has to make his own vehicle ; and who has ever done this 
more admirably than the great prose-writers of France, — 
Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Voltaire ? But in verse the 
composer has (with comparatively narrow liberty of 
modification) to accept his vehicle ready-made ; it is 
therefore of vital importance to him that he should find 
at his disposal a vehicle adequate to convey the highest 
matters of poetry. We may even get a decisive test of the 
poetical power of a language and nation by ascertaining 
how far the principal poetical vehicle which they have 
employed, how far (in plainer words) the established 
national meter for high poetry, is adequate or inadequate. 
It seems to me that the established meter of this kind in 
France, — the Alexandrine, — is inadequate ; that as a 
vehicle for high poetry it is greatly inferior to the 
hexameter or to the iambics of Greece (for example), or to 
the blank verse of England. Therefore the man of genius 
who uses it is at a disadvantage as compared with the man 
of genius who has for conveying his thoughts a more 
adequate vehicle, metrical or not. Eacine is at a dis- 
advantage as compared with Sophocles or Shakespeare, and 
he is likewise at a disadvantage as compared with Bossuet. 

The same may be said of oar own poets of the eighteenth 



62 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

century, a century which gave them as the main vehicle for 
their high poetry a meter inadequate (as much as the 
French Alexandrine, and nearly in the same way) for this 
poetry, — the ten-syllable couplet. It is worth remarking, 
that the English poet of the eighteenth century whose 
compositions wear best and give one the most entire 
satisfaction, — Gray, — hardly uses that couplet at all : this 
abstinence, however, limits Gray's productions to a few 
short compositions, and (exquisite as these are) he is a 
poetical nature repressed and without free issue. For 
English poetical production on a great scale, for an English 
poet deploying all the forces of his genius, the ten-syllable 
couplet was, in the eighteenth century, the established, 
one may almost say the inevitable, channel. Now this 
couplet, admirable (as Chaucer uses it) for story-telling 
not of the epic pitch, and often admirable for a few lines 
even in poetry of a very high pitch, is for continuous use in 
poetry of this latter kind inadequate. Pope, in his Essay 
on Man, is thus at a disadvantage compared with 
Lucretius in his poem on Nature : Lucretius has an 
adequate vehicle. Pope has not. Nay, though Pope's 
genius for didactic poetry was not less than that of 
Horace, while his satirical power was certainly greater, still 
one's taste receives, I cannot but think, a certain satisfac- 
tion when one reads the Epistles and Satires of Horace, 
which it fails to receive when one reads the Satires and 
Epistles of Pope. Of such avail is the superior adequacy 
of the vehicle used to compensate even an inferiority of 
genius in the user ! In the same way Pope is at a disad- 
vantage as compared with Addison. The best of Addison's 
composition (the '^ Coverley Papers" in the Spectator, 
for instance) wears better than the best of Pope's, because 
Addison has in his prose an intrinsically better vehicle for 
his genius than Pope in his couplet. But Bacon has no 
such advantage over Shakespeare ; nor has Milton, writing 
prose (for no contemporary English prose-writer must be 
matched with Milton except Milton himself), any such 
advantage over Milton writing verse : indeed, the advantage 
here is all the other way. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. ^3 

It is in the prose remains of Guerin, — his journals, his 
letters, and the striking composition which I have already 
mentioned, the Centaur, — that his extraordinary gift 
manifests itself. He has a truly interpretative faculty ; 
the most profound and delicate sense of the life of Nature, 
and the most exquisite felicity in finding expressions to 
render that sense. To all who love poetry, Guerin de- 
serves to be something more than a name ; and I shall try, 
in spite of the impossibility of doing justice to such a 
master of expression by translations, to make Englisli 
readers see for themselves how gifted an organization his 
was, and how few artists have received from Nature a more 
magical faculty of interpreting her. 

In the winter of the year 1832 there was collected in 
Brittany, around the well-known Abbe Lamennais, a 
singular gathering. At a lonely place, La Chenaie, he 
had founded a religious retreat, to which disciples, at- 
tracted by his powers or by his reputation, repaired. 
Some came with the intention of preparing themselves for 
the ecclesiastical profession ; others merely to profit by 
the society and discourse of so distinguished a master. 
Among the inmates were men whose names have since be- 
come known to all Europe, — Lacordaire and M. de Mon- 
talembert ; there were others, who have acquired a reputa- 
tion, not European, indeed, but considerable, — the Abbe 
Gerbet, the Abbe Rohrbacher ; others, who have never 
quitted the shade of private life. The winter of 1832 was 
a period of crisis in the religious world of France : Lamen- 
nais's rupture with Eome, the condemnation of his opin- 
ions by the Pope, and his revolt against that condemnation, 
were imminent. Some of his followers, like Lacordaire, 
had already resolved not to cross the Rubicon with their 
leader, not to go into rebellion against Rome ; they were 
preparing to separate from him. The society of La 
Chenaie was soon to dissolve ; but, such as it is shown to 
us for a moment, with its voluntary character, its simple 
and severe life in common, its mixture of lay and clerical 
members, the genius of its chiefs, the sincerity of its 



04 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

disciples, — above all, its paramount fervent interest in mat- 
ters of spiritual and religious concernment, — it offers a 
most instructive spectacle. It is not the spectacle we 
most of us think to find in France, the France we have 
imagined from common English notions, from the streets 
of Paris, from novels ; it shows us how, wherever there is 
greatness like that of France, there are, as its foundation, 
treasures of fervor, pure-mindedness, and spirituality 
somewhere, whether we know of them or not ; — a store of 
that which Goethe calls Halt ; — since greatness can never 
be founded upon frivolity and corruption. 

On the evening of the 18th of December in this year 
1832, M. de Lamennais was talking to those assembled in 
the sitting-room of La Chenaie of his recent journey to 
Italy. He talked with all his usual animation ; " but," 
writes one of his hearers, a Breton gentleman, M. de Mar- 
zan, '' I soon became inattentive and absent, being struck 
with the reserved attitude of a young stranger some 
twenty-two years old, pale in face, his black hair already 
thin over his temples, with a southern eye, in which 
brightness and melancholy were mingled. He kept him- 
self somewhat aloof, seeming to avoid notice rather than 
to court it. All the old faces of friends which I found 
about me at this my re-entry into the circle of La Chenaie 
failed to occupy me so much as the sight of this stranger, 
looking on, listening, observing, and saying nothing." 

The unknown was Maurice de Guerin. Of a noble but 
poor family, having lost his mother at six years old, he 
had been brought up by his father, a man saddened by liis 
wife's death, and austerely religious, at the chateau of Le 
Cayla, in Languedoc. His childhood was not gay ; he 
had not the society of other boys ; and solitude, the sight 
of his father's gloom, and the habit of accompanying the 
cure of the parish on his rounds among the sick and dying, 
made him prematurely grave and familiar with sorrow. 
He went to school first at Toulouse, then at the College 
Stanislas at Paris, with a temperament almost as unfit as 
Shelley's for common school life. His youth was ardent, 
sensitive, agitated, and unhappy. In 1832 he procured 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 65 

admission to La Chenaie to brace his spirit by the teach- 
ing of Lamennais, and to decide whether his religious feel- 
ings would determine themselves into a distinct religions 
vocation. Strong and deep religious feelings he had, im- 
planted in him by nature, developed in him by the circum- 
stances of his childhood ; but he had also (and here is the 
key to his character) that temperament which opposes it- 
self to the fixedness of a religious vocation, or of any voca- 
tion of which fixedness is an essential attribute ; a tempera- 
ment mobile, inconstant, eager, thirsting for new impres- 
sions, abhorring rules, aspiring to a ^^ renovation without 
end ; '' a temperament common enough among artists, but 
with which few artists, who have it to the same degree as 
Guerin, unite a seriousness and a sad intensity like his. 
After leaving school, and before going to La Chenaie, he 
had been at home at Le Cayla with his sister Eugenie (a 
wonderfully gifted person, whose genius so competent a 
judge as M. Sainte-Beuve is inclined to pronounce even 
superior to her brother's) and his sister Eugenie's friends. 
With one of these friends he had fallen in love, — a slight 
and transient fancy, but which had already called his 
poetical powers into exercise ; and his poems and frag- 
ments, in a certain green note-book (le Gahier Vert) 
which he long continued to make the depository of his 
thoughts, and which became famous among his friends, 
he brought with him to La Chenaie. There he found 
among the younger members of the Society several who, 
like himself, had a secret passion for poetry and literature ; 
with these he became intimate, and in his letters and 
journal we find him occupied, now with a literary com- 
merce established with these friends, now with the for- 
tunes, fast coming to a crisis, of the Society, and now with 
that for the sake of which he came to La Chenaie, — his 
religious progress and the state of his soul. 

On Christmas-day, 1832, having been then three weeks 
at La Chenaie, he writes thus of it to a friend of his family, 
M. de Bayne : — 

** La Chenaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the steppes 
of Brittany. In front of the chdteau stretches a very 



CG ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

large garden cut in two by a terrace with a lime avenue, 
at the end of which is a tiny chapel. I am extremely fond 
of this little oratory, where one breathes a twofold peace, — 
the peace of solitude and the peace of the Lord. When 
spring comes we shall walk to prayers between two borders 
of flowers. On the east side, and only a few yards from 
the chateau, sleeps a small mere between two woods, 
where the birds in warm weather sing all day long ; and 
then, — right, left, on all sides, — woods, woods, everywhere 
woods. It looks desolate just now that all is bare and the 
woods are rust-color, and under this Brittany sky, which is 
always clouded and so low that it seems as if it were going 
to fall on your head ; but as soon as spring comes the 
sky raises itself up, the woods come to life again, and 
everything will be full of charm." 

Of what La Chenaie will be when spring comes he has 
a foretaste on the 3d of March. 

"To-day "(he writes in his journal) "has enchanted 
me. For the first time for a long while the sun has shown 
himself in all his beauty. He has made the buds of the 
leaves and flowers swell, and he has waked up in me a 
thousand happy thoughts. The clouds assume more and 
more their light and graceful shapes, and are sketching, 
over the blue sky, the most charming fancies. The woods 
have not yet got their leaves, but they are taking an in- 
describable air of life and gaiety, which gives them quite 
a new physiognomy. Everything is getting ready for the 
great festival of Nature." 

Storm and snow adjourn this festival a little longer. 
On the 11th of March he writes : — 

" It has snowed all night. I have been to look at our 
primroses ; each of them has its small load of snow, and 
was bowing its head under its burden. These pretty 
flowers, with their rich yellow color, had a charming effect 
under their white hoods. I saw whole tufts of them 
roofed over by a single block of snow ; all these laughing 
flowers thus shrouded and leaning one upon another, made 
one think of a group of young giris surprised by a shower, 
and sheltering under a white apron." 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 67 

The bnr&fc of spring comes at last, though late. On tlie 
5th of April we find Guerin ^' sitting in the sun to pen- 
etrate himself to the very marrow with the divine spring. " 
On the 3d of May, " one can actually see the progress of 
the green ; it has made a start from the garden to the 
shrubberies, it is getting the upper hand all along the 
mere ; it leaps, one may say, from tree to tree, from thicket 
to thicket, in the fields and on the hillsides ; and I can see it 
already arrived at the forest edge and beginning to sj^read 
itself over the broad back of the forest. Soon it will have 
overrun everything as far as the eye can reach, and all 
those wide spaces between here and the horizon will be 
moving and sounding like one vast sea, a sea of emerald." 

Finally, on the 16th of May, he writes to M. de Bayne 
that ^^ the gloomy and bad days, — bad because they bring 
temptation by their gloom, — are, thanks to God and the 
spring, over ; and I see approaching a long file of shining 
and happy days, to do me all the good in the world. This 
Brittany of ours," he continues, 'Ogives one the idea of 
the grayest and most wrinkled old woman possible sud- 
denly changed back by the touch of a fairy's wand into a 
girl of twenty, and one of the loveliest in the world ; the 
fine weather has so decked and beautified the dear old 
country." He felt, however, the cloudiness and cold of 
the '^ dear old country " with all the sensitiveness of a 
child of the South. ^^What a difference," he cries, 
*^ between the sky of Brittany, even on the finest day, 
and the sky of our South ! Here the summer has, even 
on its highdays and holidays, something mournful, over- 
cast, and stinted about it. It is like a miser who is making 
a show ; there is a niggardliness in his magnificence. 
Give me our Languedoc sky, so bountiful of light, so 
blue, so largely vaulted ! " And somewhat later, com- 
plaining of the short and dim sunlight of a February day 
in Paris, *' What a sunshine," he exclaims, '^ to gladden 
eyes accustomed to all the wealth of light of the South ! — 
aux larges et liber ales efficsions de lumiere duciel du 3fidi.'' 

In the long winter of La Chenaie his great resource 
was literature. One has often heard that an educated 



QS ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Frenchman's reading seldom goes much beyond French 
and Latin, and that he makes the authors in these two 
languages his sole literary standard. This may or may 
not be true of Frenchmen in general, but there can be no 
question as to the width of the reading of Guerin and his 
friends, and as to the range of their literary sympathies. 
One of the circle, Hippolyte la Morvonnais, — a poet who 
published a volume of verse, and died in the prime of 
life, — had a passionate admiration for Wordsworth, and 
had even, it is said, made a pilgrimage to Eydal Mount to 
visit him ; and in Guerin's own reading I find, besides 
the French names of Bernardin de St. Pierre, Chateau- 
briand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, the names of Homer, 
Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe ; and he quotes 
both from Greek and from English authors in the 
original. His literary tact is beautifully fine and true, 
" Every poet," he writes to his sister, ^'has his own art 
of poetry written on the ground of his own soul ; there is 
no other. Be constantly observing Nature in her smallest 
details, and then write as the current of your thoughts 
guides you ; — that is all." But with all this freedom from 
the bondage of forms and rules, Guerin marks with per- 
fect precision the faults of the free French literature of 
his time, — the UttSrature facile, — and judges the romantic 
school and its prospects like a master : ^^ that youthful 
literature which has put forth all its blossom prematurely, 
and has left itself a helpless prey to the returning frost, 
stimulated as it has been by the burning sun of our cen- 
tury, by this atmosphere charged with a perilous heat, 
which has overhastened every sort of development, and will 
most likely reduce to a handful of grains the harvest of our 
age." And the popular authors, — those *^ whose name 
appears once and disappears forever, whose books, un- 
welcome to all serious people, welcome to the rest of the 
world, to novelty-hunters and novel-readers, fill with 
vanity these vain souls, and then, falling from hands heavy 
with the languor of satiety, drop forever into the gulf of 
oblivion ; " and those, more noteworthy, " the writers of 
books celebrated, and, as works of art, deserving celebrity, 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 69 

but which have in them not one grain of that hidden 
manna, not one of those sweet and wholesome thoughts 
which nourish the human soul and refresh it when it is 
weary/' — these he treats with such severity that he may 
in some sense be described, as he describes himself, as 
" invoking with his whole heart a classical restoration/' 
He is best described, however, not as a partisan of any 
school, but as an ardent seeker for that mode of ex- 
pression which is the most natural, happy, and true. He 
writes to his sister Eugenie : — 

'^I want you to reform your system of composition ; 
it is too loose, too vague, too Lamartinian. Your verse 
is too sing-song ; it does not talk enough. Form for 
yourself a style of your own, which shall be your real ex- 
pression. Study the French language by attentive read- 
ing, making it your care to remark constructions, turns 
of expression, delicacies of style, but without ever adopt- 
ing the manner of any master. In the works of these 
masters we must learn our language, but we must use it 
each in our own fashion." ' 

It was not, however, to perfect his literary judgment 
that Guerin came to La Chenaie. The religious feeling, 
which was as much a part of his essence as the passion 
for Xature and the literary instinct, shows itself at mo- 
ments jealous of these its rivals, and alarmed at their pre- 
dominance. Like all powerful feelings, it wants to 
exclude every other feeling and to be absolute. One 
Friday in April, after he has been delighting himself 
with the shapes of the clouds and the progress of the 
spring, he suddenly bethinks himself that the day is Good 
Friday, and exclaims in his diary: — 

^^My God, what is my soul about that it can thus go 
running after such fugitive delights on Good Friday, on 
this day all filled with thy death and our redemption ? 
There is in me I know not what damnable spirit, that 

1 Part of these extracts date from a time a little after Guerin 's 
residence at La Chenaie ; but already, amidst the readings and 
conversations of La Chenaie, his literary judgment was perfectly 
formed. 



70 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

awakens in me strong discontents, and is forever prompt- 
ing me to rebel against the holy exercises and the devout 
collectedness of soul which are the meet preparation for 
these great solemnities of our faith. Oh how well can I 
trace here the old leaven, from which I have not yet per- 
fectly cleared my soul ! " 

And again, in a letter to M. de Marzan : •^^ Of what, my 
God, are we made," he cries, '' that a little verdure and 
a few trees should be enough to rob ns of our tranquillity 
and to distract us from thy love ? " And writing, three 
days after Easter Sunday, in his journal he records the 
reception at La Chenaie of a fervent neophyte, in words 
which seem to convey a covert blame of his own want of 
fervency : — 

*' Three days have passed over our heads since the 
great festival. One anniversary the less for us yet to 
spend of the death and resurrection of our Saviour ! 
Every year thus bears away with it its solemn festivals ; 
when will the everlasting festival be here ? I have been 
witness of a most touching sight ; Francois has brought 
ns one of his friends whom he has gained to the faith. 
This neophyte joined us in our exercises during the Holy 
week, and on Easter day he received the communion with 
ns. Frangois was in raptures. It is a truly good work 
which he has thus done. Frangois is quite young, hardly 
twenty years old ; M. de la M. is thirty, and is married. 
There is something most touching and beautifully simple 
in M. de la M. letting himself thus be brought to God by 
quite a young man; and to see friendship, on Frangois's 
side, thus doing the work of an Apostle, is not less 
beautiful and touching." 

Admiration for Lamennais worked in the same direction 
with this feeling. Lamennais never appreciated Guerin ; 
his combative, rigid, despotic nature, of which the charac- 
teristic was energy, had no affinity with Guerin's elusive, 
undulating, impalpable nature, of which the character- 
istic was delicacy. He set little store by his new disciple, 
and could hardly bring himself to understand what others 
found so remarkable in him, his own genuine feeling 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. ^1 

towards him being one of indulgent compassion. But the 
intuition of Guerin, more discerning than the logic of 
his master, instinctively felt what there was commanding 
and tragic in Lamennais's character, different as this was 
from his own ; and some of his notes are among the most 
interesting records of Lamennais which remain. 

" ' Do you know what it is,' M. Feli ' said to us on the 
evening of the day before yesterday, ' which makes man 
the most suffering of all creatures ? It is that he has one 
foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that 
he is torn asunder, not by four horses, as in the horrible 
old times, but between two worlds.' Again he said to us 
as we heard the clock strike : ^ If that clock knew that it 
was to be destroyed the next instant, it would still keep 
striking its hour until that instant arrived. My children, 
be as the clock ; whatever may be going to happen to you, 
strike always your hour.' " 

Another time Guerin writes : 

'^ To-day M. Feli startled us. He was sitting behind 
the chapel, under the two Scotch firs ; he took his stick 
and marked out a grave on the turf, and said to Elie, '^ It 
is there I wish to be buried, but no tombstone ! only a 
simple hillock of grass. Oh, how well I shall be there ! ' 
Elie thought he had a presentiment that his end was near. 
This is not the first time he has been visited by such a 
presentiment ; when he was setting out for Eome, he said 
to those here : ' I do not expect ever to come back to 
you ; you must do the good which I have failed to do.' He 
is impatient for death." 

Overpowered by the ascendency of Lamennais, Guerin, 
in spite of his hesitations, in spite of his confession to 
himself that, '' after a three weeks' close scrutiny of his 
soul, in the hope of finding the pearl of a religious voca- 
tion hidden in some corner of it," he had failed to find 
what he sought, took, at the end of August 1833, a de- 
cisive step. He joined the religious order which Lamen- 

1 The familiar name given to M. de Lamennais by his followers 
at La Chenaie. 



72 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

nais had founded. But at this very moment the deepen- 
ing displeasure of Kome with Lamennais determined the 
Bishop of Rennes to break up, in so far as it was a relig- 
ious congregation, the Society of La Chenaie, to transfer 
the novices to Ploermel, and to place them under other 
superintendence. In September, Lamennais, "who had 
not yet ceased," writes M. de Marzau, a faithful Catholic, 
" to be a Christian and a priest, took leave of his beloved 
colony of La Chenaie, with the anguish of a general who 
disbands his army down to the last recruit, and withdraws 
annihilated from the field of battle." Guerin went to 
Ploermel. But here, in the seclusion of a real religious 
house, he instantly perceived how alien to a spirit like 
his, — a spirit which, as he himself says somewhere, *'had 
need of the open air, wanted to see the sun and the 
flowers," — was the constraint and the monotony of a mo- 
nastic life, when Lamennais's genius was no longer present 
to enliven this life for him. On the 7th of October he 
renounced the novitiate, believing himself a partisan of 
Lamennais in his quarrel with Rome, reproaching the life 
he had left with demanding passive obedience instead of 
trying " to put in practice the admirable alliance of order 
with liberty, and of variety with unity," and declaring 
that, for his part, he preferred taking the chances of a 
life of adventure to submitting himself to be ^^ garotte par 
1171 regleme7it, — tied hand and foot by a set of rules." In 
real truth, a life of adventure, or rather a life free to 
wander at its own will, was that to which his nature irre- 
sistibly impelled him. 

For a career of adventure, the inevitable field was Paris. 
But before this career began, there came a stage, the 
smoothest, perhaps, and the most happy in the short life 
of Guerin. M. la Morvonnais, one of his La Chenaie 
friends, — some years older than Guerin, and married to a 
wife of singular sweetness and charm, — had a house by 
the seaside at the mouth of one of the beautiful rivers of 
Brittany, the Arguenon. He asked Guerin, when he left 
Ploermel, to come and stay with him at this place, called 
Le Val de TArguenon, and Guerin spent the winter of 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 73 

1833-4 there. I grudge every word about Le Val and its 
inmates which is not Guerin's own, so charming is the 
picture drawn of them, so truly does his talent find itself 
in its best vein as he draws it. 

*' How full of goodness'' (he writes in his journal of 
the 7th of December) '* is Providence to me ! For fear 
the sudden passage from the mild and temperate air of a 
religious life to the torrid clime of the world should be 
too trying to my soul, it has conducted me, after I have 
left my sacred shelter, to a house planted on the frontier 
between the two regions, where, without being in solitude, 
one is not yet in the world ; a house whose windows look 
on the one side towards the plain where the tumult of 
men is rocking, on the other towards the wilderness where 
the servants of God are chanting. I intend to write down 
the record of my sojourn here, for the days here spent 
are full of happiness, and I know that in the time to come 
I shall often turn back to the story of these past felicities. 
A man, pious, and a poet ; a woman, whose spirit is in 
such perfect sympathy with his that you would say they 
had but one being between them ; a child, called Marie 
like her mother, and who sends, like a star, the first rays 
of her love and thought through the white cloud of in- 
fancy ; a simple life in an old-fashioned house ; the ocean, 
which comes morning and evening to bring us its harmo- 
nies ; and lastly, a wanderer who descends from Carmel 
and is going to Babylon, and who has laid down at this 
threshold his staff and his sandals, to take his seat at the 
hospitable table ; — here is matter to make a biblical poem 
of, if I could only describe things as I can feel them ! " 

Every line written by Guerin during this stay at Le 
Val is worth quoting, but I have only room for one extract 
more : 

*' Never" (he writes, a fortnight later, on the 20th of 
December), "^ never have I tasted so inwardly and deeply 
the happiness of home-life. All the little details of this 
life, which in their succession makes up the day, are to 
me so many stages of a continuous charm carried from 
one end of the day to the other. The morning greeting, 



74 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

which in some sort renews the pleasure of the first arrival, 
for the words with which one meets are almost the same, 
and the separation at night, through the hours of dark- 
ness and uncertainty, does not ill represent longer separa- 
tions ; then breakfast, during which you have the fresh 
enjoyment of having met together again ; the stroll after- 
wards, when we go out and bid Nature good morning ; 
the return and setting to work in an old paneled chamber 
looking out on the sea, inaccessible to all the stir of the 
house, a perfect sanctuary of labor ; dinner, to which we 
are called, not by a bell, which reminds one too much of 
school or a great house, but by a pleasant voice ; the 
gaiety, the merriment, the talk flitting from one subject 
to another and never dropping so long as the meal lasts ; 
the crackling fire of dry branches to which we draw our 
chairs directly afterwards, the kind words that are spoken 
round the warm flame which sings while we talk ; and 
then, if it is fine, the walk by the seaside, when the sea has 
for its visitors a mother with her child in her arms, this 
child's father and a stranger, each of these two last with a 
stick in his hand ; the rosy lips of the little girl, which 
keep talking at the same time with the waves, — now and 
then tears shed by her and cries of childish fright at the 
edge of the sea ; our thoughts, the father's and mine, as 
we stand and look at the mother and child smiling at one 
another, or at the child in tears and the mother trying to 
comfort it by her caresses and exhortations ; the Ocean, 
going on all the while rolling up his waves and noises ; 
the dead boughs which we go and cut, here and there, 
out of the copse-wood, to make a quick and bright fire 
when we get home, — this little taste of the woodman's 
calling which brings us closer to Nature and makes us 
think of M. Feli's eager fondness for the same work ; the 
hours of study and poetical flow which carry us to supper- 
time ; this meal, which summons us by the same gentle 
voice as its predecessor, and which is passed amid the same 
joys, only less loud, because evening sobers everything, 
tones everything down ; then our evening, ushered in by 
the blaze of a cheerful fire, and which with its alternations 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. /J'5 

of reading and talking brings us at last to bed-time : — to 
all tlie charms of a day so spent add the dreams which 
follow it, and your imagination will still fall far short of 
these home-joys in their delightful reality." 

I said the foregoing should be my last extract, but who 
could resist this picture of a January evening on the coast 
of Brittany ? — 

*^A11 the sky is covered over with gray clouds just 
silvered at the edges. The sun, who departed a few min- 
utes ago, has left behind him enough light to temper for 
awhile the black shadows, and to soften down, as it were, 
the approach of night. The winds are hushed, and the 
tranquil ocean sends up to me, when I go out on the 
doorstep to listen, only a melodious murmur, which dies 
away in the soul like a beautiful wave on the beach. The 
birds, the first to obey the nocturnal influence, make their 
way towards the woods, and you hear the rustle of their 
wings in the clouds. The copses which cover the whole 
hillside of Le Val, which all the day-time are alive with 
the chirp of the wren, the laughing whistle of the wood- 
pecker.^ and the different notes of a multitude of birds, 
have no longer any sound in their paths and thickets, un- 
less it be the prolonged high call of the blackbirds at play 
with one another and chasing one another, after all the 
other birds have their heads safe under their wings. The 
noise of man, always the last to be silent, dies gradually 
out over the face of the fields. The general murmur 
fades away, and one hears hardly a sound except what 
comes from the villages and hamlets, in which, up till far 
into the night, there are cries of children and barking of 
dogs. Silence wraps me round ; everything seeks repose 
except this pen of mine, which perhaps disturbs the rest 
of some living atom asleep in a crease of my note-book, 
for it makes its light scratching as it puts down these idle 
thoughts. Let it stop, then ! for all I write, have written, 
or shall write, will never be worth setting against the sleep 
of an atom." 

1 " The woodpecker ^a-wg/is," says White of Selborne ; and here 
is Guerin, in Brittany, confirming his testimony. 



76 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

On the 1st of February we find him in a lodging at 
Paris. *' I enter the world " (such are the last words 
written in his journal at Le Val) '^ with a secret horror." 
His outward history for the next five years is soon told. 
He found himself in Paris, poor, fastidious, and with 
health which already, no doubt, felt the obscure presence 
of the malady of which he died — consumption. One of 
his Brittany acquaintances introduced him to editors, tried 
to engage him in the periodical literature of Paris ; and 
so unmistakable was Guerin's talent that even his first 
essays were immediately accepted. But Guerin's genius 
was of a kind which unfitted him to get his bread 
in this manner. At first he was pleased with the notion 
of living by his pen ; ^\je n'ai qu'a ecrire,'' he says to his 
sister, — *' I have only got to write." But to a nature like 
his, endued with the passion for perfection, the necessity 
to produce, to produce constantly, to produce whether in 
the vein or out of the vein, to produce something good or 
bad or middling, as it may happen, but at all events some- 
thing, — is the most intolerable of tortures. To escape 
from it he betook himself to that common but most per- 
fidious refuge of men of letters, that refuge to which Gold- 
smith and poor Hartley Coleridge had betaken themselves 
before him, — the profession of teaching. In September, 
1834, he procured an engagement at the College Stanislas, 
where he had himself been educated. It was vacation- 
time, and all he had to do was to teach a small class com- 
posed of boys who did not go home for the holidays, — in 
his own words, ^* scholars left like sick sheep in the fold, 
while the rest of the flock are frisking in the fields." 
After the vacation he was kept on at the college as a su- 
pernumerary. " The master of the fifth class has asked 
for a month's leave of absence ; I am taking his place, and 
by this work I get one hundred francs (£4). I have been 
looking about for pupils to give private lessons to, and I 
have found three or four. School work and private lessons 
together fill my day from half-past seven in the morning 
till half-past nine at night. The college dinner serves 
me for breakfast, and I go and dine in the evening at 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 77 

twenty-four sotis, as a young man beginning life should." 
To better his position in the hierarchy of public teachers 
it was necessary that he should take the degree of agrege- 
eslettresy corresponding to our degree of Master of Arts ; 
and to his heavy work in teaching, there was thus added 
that of preparing for a severe examination. The drudgery 
of this life was very irksome to him, although less 
insupportable than the drudgery of the profession of 
letters ; inasmuch as to a sensitive man like Guerin, to 
silence his genius is more tolerable than to hackney it. 
Still the yoke wore him deeply, and he had moments of 
bitter revolt ; he continued, however, to bear it with res- 
olution, and on the whole with patience, for four years. 
On the 15th of November, 1838, he married a young Creole 
lady of some fortune. Mademoiselle Caroline de Gervain, 
''whom,'* to use his own words, ''Destiny, who loves 
these surprises, has wafted from the farthest Indies into 
my arms." The marriage was happy, and it insured to 
Guerin liberty and leisure ; but now " the blind Fury 
with the abhorred shears " was hard at hand. Consump- 
tion declared itself in him : " I pass my life," he writes, 
with his old playfulness and calm, to his sister on the 8th 
of April, 1839, " within my bed-curtains, and wait patiently 
enough, thanks to Caro's ^ goodness, books, and dreams, 
for the recovery which the sunshine is to bring with it." 
In search of this sunshine he was taken to his native coun- 
try, Languedoc, but in vain. He died at Le Cayla on the 
19th of July, 1839. 

The vicissitudes of his inward life during these five 
years were more considerable. His opinions and tastes 
underwent great, or what seem to be great, changes. He 
came to Paris the ardent partisan of Lamennais : even in 
April, 1834, after Rome had finally condemned Lamennais, 
— " To-night there will go forth from Paris," he writes, 
" with his face set to the west, a man whose every step I 
would fain follow, and who returns to the desert for 
which I sigh. M. Feli departs this evening for La 
Chenaie." But in October, 1835, — *' I assure you," he 
1 His wife. 



78 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

writes to his sister, ^' I am at last weaned from M. de La- 
mennais ; one does not remain a babe a7id suckling, for 
ever; I am perfectly freed from his influence." There 
was a greater change than this. In 1834 the main cause 
of Guerin's aversion to the literature of the French ro- 
mantic school, was that this literature, having had a relig- 
ious origin, had ceased to be religious : ^' it has forgotten," 
he says, ^^the house and the admonitions of its Father." 
But his friend M. de Marzan tells us of a *' deplorable 
revolution " which, by 1836, had taken place in him. 
Guerin had become intimate with the chiefs of this very 
literature ; he no longer went to church ; '^ the bond of 
a common faith, in which our friendship had its birth, 
existed between us no longer." Then, again, "this inter- 
regnum was not destined to last." Eeconyerted to his 
old faith by suffering and by the pious efforts of his sister 
Eugenie, Guerin died a Catholic. His feelings about 
society underwent a like change. After " entering the 
world with a secret horror," after congratulating himself 
when he had been some months at Paris on being " dis- 
engaged from the social tumult, out of the reach of those 
blows which, when I live in the thick of the world, bruise 
me, irritate me, or utterly crush me," M. Sainte-Beuve 
tells us of him, two years afterwards, appearing in society 
" a man of the world, elegant, even fashionable ; a talker 
who could hold his own against the most brilliant talkers 
of Paris." 

In few natures, however, is there really such essential 
consistency as in Guerin's. He says of himself, in the 
very beginning of his journal: **1 owe everything to 
poetry, for there is no other name to give to the sum total 
of my thoughts ; I owe to it whatever I now have pure, 
lofty and solid in my soul ; I owe to it all my consolations 
in the past; I shall probably owe to it my future.'' 
Poetry, the poetical instinct, was indeed the basis of his 
nature ; but to say so thus absolutely is not quite enough. 
One aspect of poetry fascinated Guerin 's imagination and 
held it prisoner. Poetry is the interpretress of the natural 
world, and she is the interpretress of the moral world ; it 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 79 

was as the iuterpretress of the natural world that she had 
Guerin for her mouthpiece. To make magically near 
and real the life of Nature, and man's life only so far as 
it is a part of that Nature, was his faculty ; a faculty of 
naturalistic, not of moral interpretation. This faculty 
always has for its basis a peculiar temperament, an extraor- 
dinary delicacy of organization and susceptibility to im- 
pressions ; in exercising it the poet is in a great degree 
passive (Wordsworth thus speaks of a loise passiveness) ; 
he aspires to be a sort of human ^olian harp, catching 
and rendering every rustle of Nature. To assist at the 
evolution of the whole life of the world is his craving, and 
intimately to feel it all : 

. . . *' The glow, the thrill of life, 
Where, where do these abound ? " 

is what he asks : he resists being riveted and held station- 
ary by any single impression, but would be borne on for- 
ever down an enchanted stream. He goes into religion 
and out of religion into society and out of society, not from 
the motives which impel men in general, but to feel what 
it is all like ; he is thus hardly a moral agent, and, like the 
passive and ineffectual Uranus of Keats's poem, he may 
say : 

"I am but a voice ; 

My life is but the life of winds and tides ; 
No more than winds and tides can I avail." 

He hovers over the tumult of life, but does not really put 
his hand to it. 

No one has expressed the aspirations of this tempera- 
ment better than Guerin himself. In the last year of his 
life he writes : — 

" I return, as you see, to my old brooding over the 
world of Nature, that line which my thoughts irresistibly 
take ; a sort of passion which gives me enthusiasm, tears, 
bursts of joy, and an eternal food for musing ; and yet I 
am neither philosopher nor naturalist, nor anything 
learned whatsoever. There is one word which is the God 



80 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of my imagination, the tyrant, I ought rather to say, that 
fascinates it, lures it onward, gives it work to do without 
ceasing, and will finally carry it I know not where ; the 
word life.'' 

And in one place in his journal he says : — 

^* My imagination welcomes every dream, every impres- 
sion, without attaching itself to any, and goes on forever 
seeking something new." 

And again in another : — 

** The longer I live, and the clearer I discern between 
true and false in society, the piore does the inclination to 
live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary 
man on the frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the 
world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come 
and go and make nests around our habitations, they are 
fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us ; but they 
take their flight in a heaven which is boundless, but the 
hand of God alone gives and measures to them their daily 
food, but they build their nests in the heart of the thick 
bushes, or hang them in the height of the trees. So 
would I, too, live, hovering round society, and having 
always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky." 

In the same spirit he longed for travel. ^^ When one is 
a wanderer," he writes to his sister, ^' one feels that one 
fulfils the true condition of humanity." And the last 
entry in his journal is, — ^* The stream of travel is full of 
delight. Oh, who will set me adrift on this Nile ! " 

Assuredly it is not in this temperament that the active 
virtues have their rise. On the contrary, this tempera- 
ment, considered in itself alone, indisposes for the dis- 
charge of them. Something morbid and excessive, . as 
manifested in Guerin, it undoubtedly has. In him, as in 
Keats, and as in another youth of genius, whose name, 
but the other day unheard of. Lord Houghton has so grace- 
fully written in the history of English poetry, — David 
Gray, — the temperament, the talent itself, is deeply in- 
fluenced by their mysterious malady ; the temperament 
is devouring ; it uses vital power too hard and too fast, 
paying the penalty in long hours of unutterable exhaus- 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 81 

tion and in premature death. The intensity of Gnerin's 
depression is described to us by Gnerin himself with the 
same incomparable touch with which he describes happier 
feelings ; far of tener than any pleasurable sense of his 
gift he has " the sense profound, near, immense, of my 
misery, of my inward poverty." And again : ''My inward 
misery gains upon me ; I no longer dare look within." 
And on another day of gloom he does look within, and 
here is the terrible analysis : — 

*' Craving, unquiet, seeing only by glimpses, my spirit 
is stricken by all those ills which are the sure fruit of a 
youth doomed never to ripen into manhood. I grow old 
and wear myself out in the most futile mental strainings, 
and make no progress. My head seems dying, and when 
the wind blows I fancy I feel it, as if I were a tree, blow- 
ing through a number of withered branches in my top. 
Study is intolerable to me, or rather it is quite out of 
my power. Mental work brings on, not drowsiness, but an 
irritable and nervous disgust which drives rae out, I know 
not where, into the streets and public places. The 
Spring, whose delights used to come every year stealthily 
and mysteriously to charm me in my retreat, crushes me 
this year under a weight of sudden hotness. I should 
be glad of any event which delivered me from the situation 
in which I am. If I were free I would embark for some 
distant country where I could begin life anew." 

Such is this temperament in the frequent hours when 
the sense of its own weakness and isolation crushes it to 
the ground. Certainly it was not for Guerin's happiness, 
or for Keats's, as men count happiness, to be as they were. 
Still the very excess and predominance of their tempera- 
ment has given to the fruits of their genius a unique bril- 
liancy and flavor. I have said that poetry interprets in 
two ways ; it interprets by expressing with magical felicity 
the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and 
it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the 
ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and 
spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative 
both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral 



82 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

profundity. In both ways it illuminates man ; it gives 
him a satisfying sense of reality ; it reconciles him with 
himself and the universe. Thus ^schylus^s '* dpaaavrt 
-nade'iv" and his *^ dvT^ptdixov yiXaaiia" arealike interpreta- 
tive. Shakespeare interprets both when he says, 

" Full many a glorious morning have I seen, 
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye ; " 

and when he says, 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them as we will." 

These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of both 
kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. 
But it is observable that in the poets who unite both 
kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends by making itself 
the master. In Shakespeare the two kinds seem wonder- 
fully to balance one another ; but even in him the balance 
leans ; his expression tends to become too little sensuous 
and simple, too much intellectualized. The same thing 
may be yet more strongly affirmed of Lucretius and of 
Wordsworth. In Shelley there is not a balance of the 
two gifts, nor even a co-existence of them, but there is a 
passionate straining after them both, and this is what 
makes Shelley, as a man, so interesting : I will not now 
inquire how much Shelley achieves as a poet, but what- 
ever he achieves, he in general fails to achieve natural 
magic in his expression ; in Mr. Palgrave's charming 
Treasury maybe seen a gallery of his failures.^ But in 

1 Compare, for example, his *' Lines Written in the Euganean 
Hills," with Keats's "Ode to Autumn" {Oolden Treasury, i)i>. 
256, 284). The latter piece renders Nature ; the former tries to 
render her. I will not deny, however, that Shelley has natural 
magic in his rhythm ; what I deny is, that he has it in his 
language. It always seems to me that the right sphere for 
Shelley's genius was the sphere of music, not of poetry ; the 
medium of sounds he can master, but to master the more diffi- 
cult medium of words he has neither intellectual force enough 
nor sanity enough. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 83 

Keats and Gnerin, in whom the faculty of naturalistic in- 
terpretation is overpoweringly predominant, the natural 
magic is perfect ; when they speak of the world they 
speak like Adam naming by divine inspiration the crea- 
tures ; their expression corresponds with the thing's essen- 
tial reality. Even between Keats and Guerin, however, 
there is a distinction to be drawn. Keats has, above all, 
a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of 
nature ; for him she is the Alma Parens : his expression 
has, therefore, more than Guerin's, something genial, out- 
ward, and sensuous. Guerin has, above all, a sense of 
what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature ; 
for him she is the Mag^ia Paresis ; his expression has, 
therefore, more than Keats's, something mystic, inward, 
and profound. 

So he lived like a man possessed ; with his eye not on 
his own career, not on the public, not on fame, but on the 
Isis whose veil he had uplifted. He published nothing : 
*' There is more power and beauty," he writes, "^^ in the 
well-kept secret of oneVself and one's thoughts, than in 
the display of a whole heaven that one may have inside 
one." ^^ My spirit," he answers the friends who urge him 
to write, ^^ is of the home-keeping order, and has no fancy 
for adventure ; literary adventure is above all distasteful 
to it ; for this, indeed (let me say so without the least 
self-sufficiency), it has a contempt. The literary career 
seems to me unreal, both in its own essence and in the re- 
wards which one seeks from it, and therefore fatally 
marred by a secret absurdity." His acquaintances, and 
among them distinguished men of letters, full of admira- 
tion for the originality and delicacy of his talent, laughed 
at his self-depreciation, warmly assured him of his powers. 
He received their assurances with a mournful incredulity, 
which contrasts curiously with the self-assertion of poor 
David Gray, whom I just now mentioned. "It seems to 
me intolerable," he writes, " to appear to men other than 
one appears to God. My worst torture at this moment is 
the over-estimate which generous friends form of me. 
We are told that at the last judgment the secret of all 



84 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

consciences will be laid bare to the universe ; would that 
mine were so this day, and that every passer-by could see 
me as I am ! " " High above my head," he says at an- 
other time, ^' far, far away, I seem to hear the murmur of 
that world of thought and feeling to which I aspire so 
often, but where I can never attain. I think of those of 
my own age who have wings strong enough to reach it, 
but I think of them without jealousy, and as men on earth 
contemplate the elect and their felicity." And, criticis- 
ing his own composition, *' When I begin a subject, my 
self-conceit" (says this exquisite artist) *' imagines I am 
doing wonders ; and when I have finished, I see nothing 
but a wretched made-up imitation, composed of odds and 
ends of color stolen from other people's palettes, and 
tastelessly mixed together on mine." Such was his passion 
fo7' perfectio7i, his disdain for all poetical work not per- 
fectly adequate and felicitous. The magic of expression, 
to which by the force of this passion he won his way, will 
make the name of Maurice de Guerin remembered in 
literature. 

I have already mentioned the Centaur, a sort of prose 
poem by Guerin, which Madame Sand published after his 
death. The idea of this composition came to him, M. 
Sainte-Beuve says, in the course of some visits which he 
made with his friend, M. Trebutien, a learned antiquarian, 
to the Museum of Antiquities in the Louvre. The free 
and wild life which the Greeks expressed by such creations 
as the Centaur had, as we might well expect, a strong 
charm for him ; under the same inspiration he composed 
a Bacchante, which was meant by him to form part of a 
prose poem on the adventures of Bacchus in India. Real 
as was the affinity which Guerin's nature had for these 
subjects, I doubt whether, in treating them, he would 
have found the full and final employment of his talent. 
But the beauty of his Centaur is extraordinary ; in its 
whole conception and expression this piece has in a 
wonderful degree that natural magic of which I have said 
so much, and the rhythm has a chai'm which bewitches 
even a foreigner. An old Centaur on his mountain is 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 85 

supposed to relate to Melampus, a human questioner, the 
life of his youth. Untranslatable as the piece is, I shall 
conclude with some exrtacts from it : — 

"The Centaur. 

'- 1 had my birth in the caves of these mountains. Like 
the stream of this valley, whose first drops trickle from 
some weeping rock in a deep cavern, the first moment of 
my life fell in the darkness of a remote abode, and with- 
out breaking the silence. When our mothers draw near 
to the time of their delivery, they withdraw to the caverns, 
and in the depth of the loneliest of them, in the thickest 
iof its gloom, bring forth, without uttering a plaint, a fruit 
silent as themselves. Their puissant milk makes us sur- 
mount, without weakness or dubious struggle, the first 
difficulties of life ; and yet we leave our caverns later than 
you your cradles. The reason is that we have a doctrine 
that the early days of existence should be kept apart and 
enshrouded, as days filled with the presence of the gods. 
Nearly the whole term of my growth was passed in the 
darkness where I was born. The recesses of my dwelling 
ran so far under the mountain that I should not have 
known on which side was the exit, had not the winds, 
when they sometimes made their way through the opening, 
sent fresh airs in, and a sudden trouble. Sometimes, too, 
my mother came back to me, having about her the odors 
of the valleys, or streaming from the waters which were 
her haunt. Her returning thus, without a word said of 
the valleys or the rivers, but with the emanations from 
them hanging about her, troubled my spirit, and I moved 
up and down restlessly in my darkness. * What is it,' I 
cried, * this outside world whither my mother is borne, 
and what reigns there in it so potent as to attract her so 
often ? ' At these moments my own force began to make 
me unquiet. I felt in it a power which could not remain 
idle ; and betaking myself either to toss my arms or to 
gallop backwards and forwards in the spacious darkness of 
the cavern, I tried to make out from the blows which I 
dealt in the empty space, or from the transport of my 



86 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

course through it, in what direction my arms were meant 
to reach, or my feet to bear me. Since that day, I have 
wound my arms round the bust of Centaurs, and round 
the body of heroes, and round the trunk of oaks ; my 
hands have assayed the rocks, the waters, phmts without 
number, and the subtlest impressions of the air, — for I 
uplift them in the dark and still nights to catch the 
breaths of wind, and to draw signs whereby I may augur 
my road ; my feet, — look, Melampus, how worn they 
are ! And yet, all benumbed as I am in this extremity of 
age, there are days when, in broad sunlight, on the moun- 
tain-tops, I renew these gallopings of my youth in the 
cavern, and with the same object, brandishing my arms 
and employing all the fleetness which yet is left to me. 



" Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of the 
Centaurs, wherefore have the gods willed that thy steps 
should lead thee to me, the oldest and most forlorn of 
them all ? It is long since I have ceased to practise any 
part of their life. 1 quit no more this mountain summit 
to which age has confined me. The point of my arrows 
now serves me only to uproot some tough-fibred plant ; 
the tranquil lakes know me still, but the rivers have for- 
gotten me. I will tell thee a little of my youth ; but these 
recollections, issuing from a worn memory, come like the 
drops of a niggardly libation poured from a damaged urn. 

**The course of my youth was rapid and full of agita- 
tion. Movement was my life, and my steps knew no 
bound. One day when I was following the course of a 
valley seldom entered by the Centaurs, I discovered a man 
making his way up the stream-side on the opposite bank. 
He was the first whom my eyes had lighted on : I despised 
him. ' Behold,' I cried, ' at the utmost but the half of 
what I am ! How short are his steps ! and his movement 
how full of labor ! Doubtless he is a Centaur overthrown 
by the gods, and reduced by them to drag himself along 
thus.' 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 87 

'* Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, feel- 
ing wherever I went the presence of Cybele, whether in 
the bed of the valleys, or on the height of the mountains, 
J. bounded whither I would, like a blind and chainless life. 
But when Mght, filled with the charm of the gods, over- 
took me on the slopes of the mountain, she guided me to 
the mouth of the caverns, and there tranquillized me as she 
tranquillizes the billows of the sea. Stretched across the 
threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden within the cave, 
and my head under the open sky, I watched the spectacle 
of the dark. The sea-gods, it is said, quit during the 
hours of darkness their palaces under the deep ; they seat 
themselves on the promontories, and their eyes wander 
over the expanse of the waves. Even so I kept watch, 
having at my feet an expanse of life like the hushed sea. 
My regards had free range, and traveled to the most dis- 
tant points. Like sea-beaches which never lose their wet- 
ness, the line of mountains to the west retained the imprint 
of gleams not perfectly wiped out by the shadows. In 
that quarter still survived, in pale clearness, mountain- 
summits naked and pure. There I beheld at one time the 
god Pan descend, ever solitary ; at another, the choir of 
the mystic divinities ; or I saw pass some mountain nymph 
charm-struck by the night. Sometimes the eagles of 
Mount Olympus traversed the upper sky, and were lost to 
view among the far-off constellations, or in the shade of 
the dreaming forests. 

'^ Thou pursuest after wisdom, Melampus, which is 
the science of the will of the gods ; and thou roamest from 
people to people like a mortal driven by the destinies. In 
the times when I kept my night-watches before the caverns, 
I have sometimes believed thas I was about to surprise the 
thought of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of 
the gods, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of 
her secrets ; but I have never made out more than sounds 
which faded away in the murmur of night, or words inar- 
ticulate as the bubbling of the rivers. 

'^ ' Macareus,' one day said the great Chiron to me, 
whose old age I tended ; * we are, both of us. Centaurs of 



88 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the mountain ; but how different are our lives ! Of my 
days all the study is (thou seest it) the search for plants ; 
thou, thou art like those mortals who have picked up on 
the waters or in the woods, and carried to their lips, some 
pieces of the reed-pipe thrown away by the god Pan. 
From that hour these mortals, having caught from their 
relics of the god a passion for wild life, or perhaps smitten 
with some secret madness, enter into the wilderness, 
plunge among the forests, follow the course of the streams, 
bury themselves in the heart of the mountains, restless, 
and haunted by an unknown purpose. The mares beloved 
of the winds in the farthest Scythia are not wilder than 
thou, nor more cast down at nightfall, when the North 
Wind has departed. Seekest thou to know the gods. 
Macareus, and from what source men, animals, and the 
elements of the universal fire have their origin ? But the 
aged Ocean, the father of all things, keeps locked within 
his own breast these secrets ; and the nymphs, who stand 
around, sing as they weave their eternal dance before 
him, to cover any sound whicli might escape from his lips 
half-opened by slumber. The mortals, dear to the gods, 
for their virtue, have received from their hands lyres to 
give delight to man, or the seeds of new plants to make 
him rich ; but from their inexorable lips, nothing ! ' 



'* Such were the lessons which the old Chiron gave me. 
Waned to the very extremity of life, the Centaur yet nour- 
ished in his spirit the most lofty discourse. 

'* For me, Melampus, I decline into my last days, 
calm as the setting of the constellations. I still retain 
enterprise enough to climb to the top of the rocks, and 
there I linger late, either gazing on the wild and restless 
clouds, or to see come up from the horizon the rainy 
Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great Orion ; but I feel my- 
self perishing and passing quickly away, like a snow-wreath 
floating on the stream ; and soon shall I be mingled with 
the waters which flow in the vast bosom of Earth." 



EUGENIE DE GUIERIN. 

"Who that had spoken of Maurice de Gnerin could 
refrain from speaking of his sister Eugenie, the most 
devoted of sisters, one of the rarest and most beautiful of 
souls ? ^' There is nothing fixed, no duration, no vitality 
in the sentiments of women towards one another ; their 
attachments are mere pretty knots of ribbon, and no more. 
In all the friendships of women I observe this slightness of 
the tie. I know no instance to the contrary, even in his- 
tory. Orestes and Pylades have no sisters." So she her- 
self speaks of the friendships of her own sex. But Electra 
can attach herself to Orestes, if not to Chrysothemis. And 
to her brother Maurice, Eugenie de Guerin was Pylades 
and Electra in one. 

The name of Maurice de Guerin, — that young man so 
gifted, so attractive, so careless of fame, and so early 
snatched away ; who died at twenty-nine ; who, says his 
sister, ^' let what he did be lost with a carelessness so un- 
just to himself, set no value on any of his own produc- 
tions, and departed hence without reaping the rich harvest 
which seemed his due ; " who, in spite of his immaturity, 
in spite of his fragility, exercised such a charm, '* fur- 
nished to others so much of that which all live by," that 
some years after his death his sister found in a country- 
house where he used to stay, in the journal of a young 
girl who had not known him, but who heard her family 
speak of him, his name, the date of his death, and these 
words, ^' il etait leur vie" (he was their life); whose talent, 
exquisite as that of Keats, with much less of sunlight, 
abundance, inventiveness, and facility in it than that of 
Keats, but with more of distinction and power, had '^ that 

89 



90 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

winning, delicate, and beautifully happy turn of expres- 
sion " which is the stamp of the master, — is beginning to 
be well known to all lovers of literature. This establish- 
ment of Maurice's name was an object for which his sister 
Eugenie passionately labored. While he was alive, she 
placed her whole joy in the flowering of this gifted nature ; 
when he was dead, she had no other thought than to 
make the world know him as she knew him. She outlived 
him nine years, and her cherished task for those years was 
to rescue the fragments of her brother's composition, to 
collect them, to get them published. In pursuing this 
task she had at first cheering hopes of success ; she had at 
last baffling and bitter disappointment. Her earthly busi-« 
ness was at an end ; she died. Ten years afterwards, it 
was permitted to the love of a friend, M. Trebutien, to 
effect for Maurice's memory what the love of a sister had 
failed to accomplish. But those who read, with delight 
and admiration, the journal and letters of Maurice de 
Guerin, could not but be attracted and touched by this 
sister Eugenie, who met them at every page. She seemed 
hardly less gifted, hardly less interesting, than Maurice 
himself. And presently M. Trebutien did for the sister 
what he had done for the brother. He published the 
journal of Mdlle. Eugenie de Guerin, and a few (too few, 
alas !) of her letters.* The book has made a profound im- 
pression in France ; and the fame which she sought only 
for her brother now crowns the sister also. 

Parts of Mdlle. de Guerin's journal were several years 
ago printed for private circulation, and a writer in the 
National Review had the good fortune to fall in with them. 
The bees of our English criticism do not often roam so far 
afield for their honey, and this critic deserves thanks for 
having flitted upon in his quest of blossom to foreign parts, 
and for having settled upon a beautiful flower found there. 
He had the discernment to see that Mdlle. de Guerin was 
well worth speaking of, and he spoke of her with feeling 

1 A volume of these, also, has just been brought out by M. Tre- 
butien, One good book, at least, in the literature of the year 
1865! 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 91 

and appreciation. But that, as I have said, was several 
years ago ; even a true and feeling homage needs to be 
from time to time renewed, if the memory of its object is 
to endure ; and criticism must not lose the occasion offered 
by Mdlle. de Guerin's journal being for the first time pub- 
lished to the world, of directing notice once more to this 
religious and beautiful character. 

Eugenie de Guerin was born in 1805, at the chateau 
of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. Her family, though reduced 
in circumstances, was noble ; and even when one is a saint 
one cannot quite forget that one comes of the stock of the 
Guarini of Italy, or that one counts among one's ancestors 
a Bishop of Senlis, who had the marshaling of the French 
order of battle on the day of Bouvines. Le Cayla was a 
solitary place, with its terrace looking down upon a stream- 
bed and valley ; '' one may pass days there without seeing 
any living thing but the sheep, without hearing any living 
thing but the birds." M. de Guerin, Eugenie's father, 
lost his wife when Eugenie was thirteen years old, and 
Maurice seven ; he was left with four children, — Eugenie, 
Marie, Erembert, and Maurice, — of whom Eugenie was 
the eldest, and Maurice was the youngest. This youngest 
child, whose beauty and delicacy had made him the object 
of his mother's most anxious fondness, was commended 
by her in dying to the care of his sister Eugenie. Maurice 
at eleven years old went to school at Toulouse ; then he 
went to the College Stanislas at Paris ; then he became a 
member of the religious society which M. de Lamennais 
had formed at La Chenaie in Brittany ; afterwards he 
lived chiefly at Paris, returning to Le Cayla, at the age of 
twenty-nine, to die. Distance, in those days, was a great 
obstacle to frequent meetings of the separated members 
of a French family of narrow means. Maurice de Guerin 
was seldom at Le Cayla after he had once quitted it, though 
his few visits to his home were long ones ; but he passed 
five years, — the period of his sojourn in Brittany, and of 
his first settlement in Paris, — without coming home at all. 
In spite of the check from these absences, in spite of the 
more serious check from a temporary alteration in Maurice's 



92 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

religious feelings, the union between the brother and 
sister was wonderfully close and firm. For they were knit 
together, not only by the tie of blood and early attach- 
ment, but also by the tie of a common genius. ^' We 
were,^' says Eugenie, ^' two eyes looking out of one head." 
She, on her part, brought to her love for her brother the 
devotedness of a woman, the intensity of a recluse, almost 
the solicitude of a mother. Her home duties prevented 
her from following the wish, which often arose in her, to 
join a religious sisterhood. There is a trace, — jnst a trace, 
— of an early attachment to a cousin ; but he died when 
she was twenty-four. After that, she lived for Maurice. 
It was for Maurice that, in addition to her constant cor- 
respondence with him by letter, she began in 1834 her 
journal, which was sent to him by portions as it was fin- 
ished. After his death she tried to continue it, addressing 
it to ** Maurice in heaven." But the effort was beyond 
her strength ; gradually the entries become rarer and 
rarer ; and on the last day of December 1840 the pen 
dropped from her hand : the journal ends. 

Other sisters have loved their brothers, and it is not her 
affection for Maurice, admirable as this was, which alone 
could have made Eugenie de Guerin celebrated. I have 
said that both brother and sister had genius : M. Sainte- 
Beuve goes so far as to say that the sister^'s genius was 
equal, if not superior, to her brother's. No one has a more 
profound respect for M. Sainte-Beuve's critical judgments 
than I have, but it seems to me that this particular judg- 
ment needs to be a little explained and guarded. In 
Maurice's special talent, which was a talent for interpret- 
ing nature, for finding words which incomparably render 
the subtlest impressions which nature makes upon us, 
which bring the intimate life of nature wonderfully near 
to us, it seems to me that his sister was by no means his 
equal. She never, indeed, expresses herself without grace 
and intelligence ; but her words, when she speaks of the 
life and appearances of nature, are in general but intellec- 
tual signs ; they are not like her brother's — symbols equiv- 
alent with the thing symbolized. They bring the notion 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 93 

of the thing described to the mind, they do not bring the 
feeling of it to the imagination. Writing from the Niver- 
nais, that region of vast woodlands in the center of France : 
*' It does one good/' says Eugenie, '' to be going about in 
the midst of this enchanting nature, with flowers, birds, 
and verdure all round one, under this large and blue sky 
of the Nivernais. How I love the gracious form of it, and 
those little white clouds here and there, like cushions of 
cotton, hung aloft to rest the eye in this immensity ! " It 
is pretty and graceful, but how different from the grave 
and pregnant strokes of Maurice's pencil ! '^^ I have been 
along the Loire, and seen on its banks the plains where 
nature is puissant and gay ; I have seen royal and antique 
dwellings, all marked by memories which have their place 
in the mournful legend of humanity, — Chambord, Blois, 
Amboise, Chenonceaux ; then the towns on the two banks 
of the river, — Orleans, Tours, Saumur, Nantes ; and at 
the end of it all, the Ocean rumbling. From these I passed 
back into the interior of the country, as far as Bourges 
and Nevers, a region of vast woodlands, in which murmurs 
of an immense range and fulness " {ce hecm torrent de rii- 
meurs, as, with an expression worthy of Wordsworth, he 
elsewhere calls them) ^'prevail and never cease." Words 
whose charm is like that of the sounds of the murmuring 
forest itself, and whose reverberations, like theirs, die 
away in the infinite distance of the soul. 

Maurice's life was in the life of nature, and the passion 
for it consumed him ; it would have been strange if his 
accent had not caught more of the soul of nature than 
Eugenie's accent, whose life was elsewhere. ''You will 
find in him," Maurice says to his sister of a friend whom 
he was recommending to her, ''you will find in him that 
which you love, and which suits you better than anything 
else, — Vonction, Veffusioji, la 77iysticite." Unction, the 
pouring out of the soul, the rapture of the mystic, were 
dear to Maurice also ; but in him the bent of his genius 
gave even to those a special direction of its own. In 
Eugenie they took the direction most native and familiar 
to them ; their object was the religious life. 



94 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

And yet, if one analyzes this beautiful and most interest- 
ing character quite to the bottom, it is not exactly as a 
saint that Eugenie de Guerin is remarkable. The ideal 
saint is a nature like Saint Fran9ois de Sales or Fenelon ; 
a nature of ineffable sweetness and serenity, a nature in 
which struggle and revolt is over, and the whole man (so 
far as is possible to human infirmity) swallowed up in love. 
Saint Theresa (it is Mdlle. de Guerin herself who reminds 
us of it) endured twenty years of unacceptance and of re- 
pulse in her prayers ; yes, but the Saint Theresa whom 
Christendom knows in Saint Theresa repulsed no longer ! 
it is Saint Theresa accepted, rejoicing in love, radiant with 
ecstasy. Mdlle. de Guerin is not one of these saints 
arrived at perfect sweetness and calm, steeped in ecstasy ; 
there is something primitive, indomitable in her, which 
she governs, indeed, but which chafes, which revolts. 
Somewhere in the depths of that strong nature there 
is a struggle, an impatience, an inquietude, an ennui, 
which endures to the end, and which leaves one, when 
one finally closes her journal, with an impression of 
profound melancholy. " There are days," she writes to 
her brother, *^when one^s nature rolls itself up, and be- 
comes a hedgehog. If I had you here at this moment, 
here close by me, how I should prick you ! how sharp and 
hard ! " '^ Poor soul, poor soul," she cries out to herself 
another day, " what is the matter, what would you have ? 
Where is that which will do you good ? Everything is 
green, everything is in bloom, all the air has a breath of 
flowers. How beautiful it is ! well, I will go out. No, I 
should be alone, and all this beauty, when one is alone, 
is worth nothing. What shall I do then ? Eead, write, 
pray, take a basket of sand on my head like that hermit- 
saint, and walk with it ? Yes, work, work ! keep busy 
the body which does mischief to the soul ! I have been 
too little occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and it 
gives a certain ennui which I have in me time to ferment." 

A certain ennui which I have in me : her wound is there. 
In vain she follows the counsel of Fenelon : '^ If God tires 
you, tell him that he tires you" No doubt she obtained 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 95 

great and frequent solace and restoration from prayer : 
''This morning I was suffering; well, at present lam 
calm, and this 1 owe to faith simply to faith, to an act of 
faith. I can think of death and eternity without trouble, 
without alarm. Over a deep of sorrow there floats a divine 
calm, a suavity which is the work of God only. In vain 
have I tried other things at a time like this : nothing 
human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it ; — 

* A Penfant il faut sa mere, 
A mon ame il faut men Dieu.' " 

Still the ennui reappears, bringing with it hours of unut- 
terable forlornness, and making her cling to her one great 
earthly happiness, — her affection for her brother, — with 
an intenseness, an anxiety, a desperation in which there is 
something morbid, and by which she is occasionally carried 
into an irritability, a jealousy which she herself is the first, 
indeed, to censure, which she severely represses, but which 
nevertheless leaves a sense of pain. 

Mdlle. de Guerin's admirers have compared her to 
Pascal, and in some respects the comparison is just. ' But 
she cannot exactly be classed with Pascal, any more than 
with Saint Francois de Sales, Pascal is a man, and the 
inexhaustible power and activity of his mind leave him no 
leisure for ennui. He has not the sweetness and serenity 
of the perfect saint ; he is, perhaps, ''der strange, kranke 
Pascal — the severe, morhicl Pascal,^^ — as Goethe (and, 
strange to say, Goethe at twenty-three, an age which 
usually feels Pascal's charm most profoundly) calls him. 
But the stress and movement of the lifelong conflict waged 
in him between his soul and his reason keep him full of 
fire, full of agitation, and keep his reader, who witnesses 
this conflict, animated and excited ; the sense of forlorn- 
ness and dejected weariness which clings to Eugenie de 
Guerin does not belong to Pascal. Eugenie de Guerin is 
a woman, and longs for a state of firm happiness, for an 
affection in which she may repose. The inward bliss of 
Saint Theresa or Fenelon would have satisfied her ; denied 



96 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

this, sbe cannot rest satisfied with the triumphs of self- 
abasement, with the somber joy of trampling the pride of 
life and of reason underfoot, of reducing all human hope 
and joy to insignificance ; she repeats the magnificent 
words of Bossuet, words which both Catholicism and Prot- 
estantism have uttered with indefatigable iteration : ''On 
trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant — at the bottom of 
everything one fields emptiness and nothingness,'^ but she 
feels, as every one but the true mystic must ever feel, their 
incurable sterility. 

She resembles Pascal, however, by the clearness and 
firmness of her intelligence, going straight and instinc- 
tively to tlie bottom of any matter she is dealing with, and 
expressing herself about it with incomparable precision ; 
never fumbling with what she has to say, never imperfectly 
seizing or imperfectly presenting her thought. And to 
this admirable precision she joins a lightness of touch, a 
feminine ease and grace, a flowing facility which are her 
own. ''I do not say," writes her brother Maurice, an ex- 
cellent judge, ''that I find in myself a dearth of expres- 
sion ; but I have not this abundance of yours, this produc- 
tiveness of soul which streams forth, which courses along 
without ever failing, and always with an infinite charm. '^ 
And writing to her of some composition of hers, produced 
after her religious scruples had for a long time kept her 
from the exercise of her talent : "You see, my dear Tor- 
toise," he writes, " that your talent is no illusion, since 
after a period, I know not how long, of poetical inaction, 
— a trial to which any half-talent would have succumbed, 
— it rears its head again more vigorous than ever. It is 
really heart-breaking to see you repress and bind down, 
with I know not what scruples, your spirit, which tends 
with all the force of its nature to develop itself in this 
direction. Others have made it a case of conscience for 
you to resist this impulse, and I make it one for you to 
follow it." And she says of herself, on one of her freer 
days : "It is the instinct of my life to Avrite, as it is the 
instinct of the fountain to flow." The charm of her ex- 
pression is not a sensuous and imaginative charm like that 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 97 

of Maurice, but rather an intellectual charm ; it comes 
from the texture of the style rather than from its elements ; 
it is not so much in the words as in the turn of the phrase, 
in the happy cast and flow of the sentence. Eecluse as 
she was, she had a great correspondence : every one wished 
to have letters from her ; and no wonder. 

To this strength of intelligence and talent of expression 
she joined a great force of character. Religion had early 
possessed itself of this force of character, and reinforced 
it : in the shadow of the Cevennes, in the sharp and tonic 
nature of this region of Southern France, which has seen 
the Albigensians, which has seen the Camisards, Catholi- 
cism too is fervent and intense. Eugenie de Guerin was 
brought up amidst strong religious influences, and they 
found in her a nature on which they could lay firm hold. 
I have said that she was not a saint of the order of Saint 
Francois de Sales or Fenelon ; perhaps she had too keen 
an intelligence to suffer her to be this, too forcible and 
impetuous a character. But I did not mean to imply the 
least doubt of the reality, the profoundness, of her relig- 
ious life. She was penetrated by the power of religion ; 
religion was the master-influence of her life ; she derived 
immense consolations from religion, she earnestly strove 
to conform her whole nature to it ; if there was an element 
in her which religion could not perfectly reach, perfectly 
transmute, she groaned over this element in her, she chid 
it, she made it bow. Almost every thought in her was 
brought into harmony with religion ; and what few 
thoughts were not thus brought into harmony were brought 
into subjection. 

Then she had her affection for her brother ; and this, 
too, though perhaps there might be in it something a little 
over-eager, a little too absolute, a little too susceptible, 
was a pure, a devoted affection. It was not only passion- 
ate, it was tender. It was tender, pliant, and self-sacrifi- 
cing to a degree that not in one nature out of a thousand, 
— of natures with a mind and will like hers, — is found at- 
tainable. She thus united extraordinary power of intelli- 
gence, extraordinary force of character, and extraordinary 



9S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

strength of affection ; and all these under the control of a 
deep religious feeling. 

This is what makes her so remarkable, so interesting. 
I shall try and make her speak for herself, that she may 
show us the characteristic sides of her rare nature with 
her own inimitable touch. 

It must be remembered that her journal is written for 
Maurice only ; in her lifetime no eye but his ever saw it. 
" Ceci n^est pas pour le public " she writes ; ^' d'est de Vin- 
time, d'est de Vdme, d est pour U7i" ** This is not for the 
public ; it contains my inmost thoughts, my very soul ; it 
is for o?^e." And Maurice, this one^ was a kind of second 
self to her. ''' We see things with the same eyes ; what 
you find beautiful, I find beautiful ; God has made our 
souls of one piece." And this genuine confidence in her 
brother's sympathy gives to the entries in her journal a 
naturalness and simple freedom rare in such compositions. 
She felt that he would understand her, and be interested 
in all that she wrote. 

One of the first pages of her journal relates an incident 
of the home-life of Le Cayla, the smallest detail of which 
Maurice liked to hear ; and in relating it she brings this 
simple life before us. She is writing in November, 
1834 :— 

'' I am furious with the gray cat. The mischievous 
beast has made away with a little half-frozen pigeon, 
which I was trying to thaw by the side of the fire. The 
poor little thing was just beginning to come round ; I 
meant to tame him ; he would have grown fond of me ; 
and there is my whole scheme eaten up by a cat ! This 
event, and all the rest of to-day's history, has passed in 
the kitchen. Here I take up my abode all the morning 
and a part of the evening, ever since I am without Mimi.' 
I have to superintend the cook ; sometimes papa comes 
down, and I read to him by the oven, or by the fireside, 
some bits out of the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. 
This book struck Fierril ' with astonishment. * Que de 

1 The familiar name of her sister Marie. 
2 A servant-boy at Le Cayla. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 99 

mouts aqui dedins ! What a lot of words there are inside 
it ! ' This boy is a real original. One evening he asked 
me if the soul was immortal ; then afterwards, what a 
philosopher was ? We had got upon great questions, as 
you see. When I told him that a philosopher was a 
person who was wise and learned : ' Then, mademoiselle, 
you are a philosopher.' This was said with an air of sim- 
plicity and sincerity which might have made even Socrates 
take it as a compliment ; but it made me laugh so much 
that my gravity as catechist was gone for that evening. 
A day or two ago Pierril left us, to his great sorrow : his 
time with us was up on Saint Brice's day. IS^ow he goes 
about with his little dog, truffle-hunting. If he comes 
this way I shall go and ask him if he still thinks I look 
like a philosopher." 

Her good sense and spirit made her discharge with 
alacrity her honsehold tasks in this patriarchal life of 
Le Cayla, and treat them as the most natural thing in the 
world. She sometimes complains, to be sure, of burning 
her fingers at the kitchen-fire. But when a literary friend 
of her brother expresses enthusiasm about her and her 
poetical nature : '^'^The poetess," she says, *' whom this 
gentleman believes me to be, is an ideal being, infinitely 
removed from the life which is actually mine — a life of 
occupations, a life of household-business, which takes up 
all my time. How could I make it otherwise ? I am 
sure I do not know ; and, besides, my duty is in this sort 
of life, and I have no wish to escape from it. 

Among these occupations of the patriarchal life of the 
chatelaine of Le Cayla intercourse with the poor fills a 
prominent place : — 

'' To-day,'' she writes on the 9th of December, 1834, "I 
have been warming myself at every fireside in the village. 
It is a round which Mimi and I often make, and in which 
I take pleasure. To-day we have been seeing sick people, 
and holding forth on doses and sick-room drinks. ^ Take 
this, do that ; ' and they attend to us just as if we were 
the doctor. We prescribed shoes for a little thing who 
was amiss from having gone barefoot ; to the brother. 



100 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

who, with a bad headache, was lying quite flat, we pre- 
scribed a pillow ; the pillow did him good, but I am afraid 
it will hardly cure him. He is at the beginning of a bad 
feverish cold : and these poor people live in the filth of 
their hovels like animals in their stable ; the bad air 
poisons them. When I come home to Le Cayla I seem to 
be in a palace." 

She had books, too ; not in abundance, not for the 
fancying them ; the list of her library is small, and it is 
enlarged slowly and with difficulty. The Letters of Saint 
Tlieresa, which she had long wished to get, she sees in the 
hands of a poor servant girl, before she can procure them 
for herself. *'What then?" is her comment: '^ very 
likely she makes a better use of them than I could." But 
she has the Imitation, the Spiritual Works of Bossuet 
and Fenelon, the Lives of the Saints, Corneille, Eacine, 
Andre Chenier, and Lamartine ; Madame de Stael's book 
on Germany, and French translations of Shakespeare's 
plays, Ossian, the Vicar of Wakefield, Scott's Old Mor- 
tality and Redgauntlet, and the Pro?nessi Sposi of Man- 
zoni. Above all, she has her own mind ; her meditations 
in the lonely fields, on the oak-grown hill -side of " The 
Seven Springs ; " her meditations and writing in her own 
room, her chamhrette, her delicieux cliez moi, where every 
night, before she goes to bed, she opens the window to 
look out upon the sky, — the balmy moonlit sky of Lan- 
guedoc. This life of reading, thinking, and writing was 
the life she liked best, the life that most truly suited her. 
'' I find writing. has become almost a necessity to me. 
"Whence does it arise, this impulse to give utterance to the 
voice of one's spirit, to pour out my thoughts before God 
and one human being ? I say one human being, because 
I always imagine that you are present, that you see what 
I write. In the stillness of a life like this my spirit is 
happy, and, as it were, dead to all that goes on up-stairs 
or down-stairs, in the house or out of the house. But this 
does not last long. ^ Come, my poor spirit,' I then say to 
myself, ' we must go back to the things of this world.' 
And I take my spinning, or a book, or a saucepan, or I 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. lOl 

play with Wolf or Trilby. Such a life as this I call heaven 
upon earth." 

Tastes like these, joined with a talent like Mdlle. de 
Guerin's, naturally inspire thoughts of literary composi- 
tion. Such thoughts she had, and perhaps she would 
have been happier if she had followed them ; but she 
never could satisfy herself that to follow them was quite 
consistent with the religious life, and her projects of com- 
position were gradually relinquished : — 

^* Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit, had never 
taken their flight beyond the narrow round in which it is 
my lot to live I In spite of all that people say to the con- 
trary, I feel that I cannot go beyond my needlework and 
my spinning without going too far : I feel it, I believe it : 
well, then I will keep in my proper sphere ; however much 
I am tempted, my spirit shall not be allowed to occupy it- 
self with great matters until it occupies itself with them 
in Heaven." 

And again : — 

^'^My journal has been untouched for a long while. 
Do you want to know why ? It is because the time seems 
to me misspent which I spend in writing it. We owe God 
an account of every minute ; and is it not a wrong use of 
our minutes to employ them in writing a history of our 
transitory days ? " 

She overcomes her scruples, and goes on writing the 
journal ; but again and again they return to her. Her 
brother tells her of the pleasure and comfort something she 
has written gives to a friend of his in affliction. She 
answers : — 

*'It is from the Cross that those thoughts come, which 
your friend finds so soothing, so unspeakably tender. 
None of them come from me. I feel my own aridity ; but 
I feel, too, that God, when he will, can make an ocean 
flow upon this bed of sand. It is the same with so many 
simple souls, from which proceed the most admirable 
things ; because they are in direct relation with God, 
without false science and without pride. And thus I am 
gradually losing my taste for books ; I say to myself : 



102 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

* What can they teacli me which I shall not one day know 
in Heaven ? let God be my master and my study here ! ' 
I try to make him so, and I find myself the better for it. 
I read little ; I go out little ; I plunge myself in the in- 
ward life. How infinite are the sayings, doings, feelings, 
events of that life ! Oh, if you could but see them ! But 
what avails it to make them known ? God alone should 
be admitted to the sanctuary of the soul." 

Beautifully as she says all this, one cannot, I think, 
read it without a sense of disquietude, without a presenti- 
ment that this ardent spirit is forcing itself from its 
natural bent, that the beatitude of the true mystic will 
never be its earthly portion. And yet how simple and 
charming is her picture of the life of religion which she 
chose as her ark of refuge, and in which she desired to 
place all her happiness : — 

'^ Cloaks, clogs, umbrellas, all the apparatus of winter, 
went with us this morning to Andillac, where we have 
passed the whole day ; some of it at the cure's house, the 
rest in church. How I like this life of a country Sunday, 
with its activity, its journeys to church, its liveliness ! 
You find all your neighbors on the road ; you have a 
curtsey from every woman you meet, and then, as you go 
along, such a talk about the poultry, the sheep and cows, 
the good man and the children ! My great delight is to 
give a kiss to these children, and see them run away and 
hide their blushing faces in their mother ^s gown. They 
are alarmed at las doumdiselos,'' as at a being of another 
world. One of these little things said the other day to its 
grandmother, who was talking of coming to see us : 
^ Minino, you mustn't go to that castle ; there is a black 
hole there.' What is the reason that in all ages the 
noble's chateau has been an object of terror ? Is it 
because of the horrors that were committed there in old 
times ? I suppose so."" 

This vague horror of the chateau, still lingering in the 
mind of the French peasant fifty years after he has stormed 
it, is indeed curious, and is one of the thousand indications 
1 The young lady. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 



103 



how unlike aristocracy on the Continent has been to aris- 
tocracy in England. But this is one of the great matters 
with which Mdlle. de Guerin would not have us occupied ; 
let us pass to the subject of Christmas in Languedoc : — 

*' Christmas is come ; the beautiful festival, the one I 
love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave the 
shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one's whole soul 
sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon 
earth, — a coming which here is announced on all sides of 
us by music and by our charming nadalet.^ Nothing at 
Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. 
You have not even the midnight-mass. We all of us went 
to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. 
Never was there a finer sky than ours was that mid- 
night ; so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back 
the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. 
The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we were not 
cold ; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed by the 
bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried 
in front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, 
T do assure you ; and I should like you to have seen us 
there on our road to church, in those lanes with the bushes 
along their banks as white as if they were in flower. The 
hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long 
spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a 
garland for the communion-table, but it melted in our 
our hands : all flowers fade so soon ! I was very sorry 
about my garland ; it was mournful to see it drip away, 
and get smaller and smaller every minute ! " 

The religious life is at bottom everywhere alike ; but it 
is curious to note the variousness of its setting and outward 
circumstance. Catholicism has these so different from 
Protestantism ! and in Catholicism these accessories have, 
it cannot be denied, a nobleness and amplitude which in 
Protestantism is often wanting to them. In Catholicism 
they have, from the antiquity of this form of religion, 
from its pretensions to universality, from its really 
widespread prevalence, from its sensuousness, something 

1 A peculiar peal rung at Christmas-time by the church bells of 
Languedoc. 



104 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

European, august, and imaginative : in Protestantism 
they often have, from its inferiority in all these 
respects, something provincial, mean, and prosaic. In 
revenge. Protestantism has a future before it, a prospect 
of growth in alliance with the vital movement of modern 
society ; while Catholicism appears to be bent on widening 
the breach between itself and the modern spirit, to be fatally 
losing itself in the multiplication of dogmas, Mariolatry, 
and miracle-mongering. But the style and circumstance 
of actual Catholicism is grander than its present tendency, 
and the style and circumstance of Protestantism is meaner 
than its tendency. While I was reading the journal of 
Mdlle. de Guerin there came into my hands the memoir 
and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss Emma Tatham ; 
and one could not but be struck with the singular contrast 
which the two lives, — in their setting rather than in their 
inherent quality, — present. Miss Tatham had not, cer- 
tainly, Mdlle. de Guerin's talent, but she had a sincere 
vein of poetic feeling, a genuine aptitude for composition. 
Both were fervent Christians, and, so far, the two lives 
have a real resemblance ; but, in the setting of them, what 
a difference ! The Frenchwoman is a Catholic in Lan- 
guedoc ; the Englishwoman is a Protestant at Margate ; 
Margate, that brick-and-mortar image of English Protes- 
tantism, representing it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness, 
— let me add, all its salubrity. Between the external form 
and fashion of these two lives, between the Catholic 
Mdlle. de Guerin's nadalet at the Languedoc Christmas, 
her chapel of moss at Easter-time, her daily reading of the 
life of a saint, carrying her to the most diverse times, 
places, and peoples, — her quoting, when she wants to fix 
her mind upon the staunchness which the religious 
aspirant needs, the words of Saint Macedonius to a hunter 
whom he met in the mountains, '^ I pursue after God, as 
you pursue after game," — her quoting, when she wants to 
break a village girl of disobedience to her mother, the 
story of the ten disobedient children whom at Hippo Saint 
Augustine saw palsied ; — between all this and the bare, 
blank, narrowly English setting of Miss Tatham's Protea< 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 105 

tantism, lier '' union in church-fellowship with the 
worshipers at Hawley Square Chapel, Margate ; " her 
*' singing with soft, sweet voice, the animating lines — 

' My Jesus to know, and feel His blood flow, 
'Tis life everlasting, *tis heaven below ; ' " 

her '' young female teachers belonging to the Sunday- 
school/' and her '' Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable class- 
leader," — what a dissimilarity ! In the ground of the two 
lives, a likeness ; in all their circumstance, what unlike- 
ness ! An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which is 
non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential, — yes ; in- 
different, — no. The signal want of grace and charm in 
English Protestantism's setting of its religious life is not 
an indifferent matter ; it is a real weakness. This ouglit 
ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone. 

I have said that the present tendency of Catholicism, 
— the Catholicism of the main body of the Catholic clergy 
and laity, — seems likely to exaggerate rather than to 
remove all that in this form of religion is most repugnant 
to reason ; but this Catholicism was not that of Mdlle. de 
Guerin. The insufficiency of her Catholicism comes from 
a doctrine which Protestantism, too, has adopted, although 
Protestantism, from its inherent element of freedom, may 
find it easier to escape from it ; a doctrine with a certain 
attraction for all noble natures, but, in the modern world 
at any rate, incurably sterile, — the doctrine of the empti- 
ness and nothingness of human life, of the superiority of 
renouncement to activity, of quietism to energy ; the 
doctrine which makes effort for things on this side of the 
grave a folly, and joy in things on this side of the grave a 
sin. But her Catholicism is remarkably free from the 
faults which Protestants commonly think inseparable from 
Catholicism ; the relation to the priest, the practice of 
confession, assume, when she speaks of them, an aspect 
which is not that under which Exeter Hall knows them, 
but which, — unless one is of the number of those who 
prefer regarding that by which men and nations die to 
regarding that by which they live, — one is glad to study. 



106 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

" La confession, ^^ she says twice in her Journal, '' n'est 
qu'u7ie expansion du repentir dans V amour;" and her 
weekly journey to the confessional in the little church of 
Oahuzac is her '^ cher pelerinage; " the little church is the 
place where she has ** laisse tant de miser es." 

" This morning/' she writes on 28th of November, ^' I 
was up before daylight, dressed quickly, said my prayers, 
and started with Marie for Oahuzac. When we got there, 
the chapel was occupied, which I was not sorry for. I like 
not to be hurried, and to have time, before I go in, to lay 
bare my soul before God. This often takes me a long 
time, because my thoughts are apt to be flying about like 
these autumn leaves. At ten o'clock I was on my knees, 
listening to words the most salutary that were ever spoken ; 
and I went away, feeling myself a better being. Every 
burden thrown off leaves us with a sense of brightness ; 
and when the soul has lain down the load of its sins at God's 
feet, it feels as if it had wings. What an admirable thing 
is confession ! What comfort, what light, what strength 
is given me every time after I have said, / have sinned," 

This blessing of confession is the greater, she says, ^^ the 
more the heart of the priest to whom we confide our 
repentance is like that divine heart which ^ has so loved 
us.' This is what attaches me to M. Bories." M. Bories 
was the cure of her parish, a man no longer young, and of 
whose loss, when he was about to leave them, she thus 
speaks : — 

^* What a grief for me ! how much I lose in losing 'this 
faithful guide of my conscience, heart, and mind, of my 
whole self, which God has appointed to be in his charge, 
and which let itself be in his charge so gladly ! He knew 
the resolves which God had put in my heart, and I had 
need of his help to follow them. Our new cure cannot 
supply his place : he is so young ! and then he seems so 
inexperienced, so undecided ! It needs firmness to pluck 
a soul out of the midst of the world, and to uphold it 
against the assaults of flesh and blood. It is Saturday, my 
day for going to Oahuzac ; I am just going there, perhaps 
I shall come back more tranquil. God has always given 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 107 

me some good thing there, in that chapel where I have 
left behind me so many miseries." 

Such is confession for her when the priest is worthy ; 
and, when he is not worthy, she knows how to separate 
the man from the office : — 

'^To-day I am going to do something which I dislike ; 
but I will do it, with God's help. Do not think I am on 
my way to the stake ; it is only that I am going to confess 
to a priest in whom I have not confidence, but who is the 
only one here. In this act of religion the man must always 
be separated from the priest, and sometimes the man must 
be annihilated." 

The same clear sense, the same freedom from supersti- 
tion, shows itself in all her religious life. She tells us, to 
be sure, how once, when she was a little girl, she stained 
a new frock, and on praying, in her alarm, to an image of 
the Virgin which hung in her room, saw the stains vanish : 
even the austerest Protestant will not judge such Mari- 
olatry as this very harshly. But, in general, the Virgin 
Mary fills in the religious parts of her journal no promi- 
nent place ; it is Jesus, not Mary. '* Oh, how well has 
Jesus said : ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden.' It is only there, only in the bosom of God, 
that we can rightly weep, rightly rid ourselves of our 
burden." And again: '*^ The mystery of suffering makes 
one grasp the belief of something to be expiated, something 
to be won. I see it in Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrow. 
It ivas necessary that the Son of Man should suffer. That 
is all we know in the troubles and calamities of life." 

And who has ever spoken of justification more impress- 
ively and piously than Mdlle. de Guerin speaks of it, when, 
after reckoning the number of minutes she has lived, she 
exclaims : — 

'^ My God, what have we done with all these minutes of 
ours, which thou, too, wilt one day reckon ? "Will there 
be any of them to count for eternal life ? will there be 
many of them ? will there be one of them ? * If thou, 
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, 
Lord, who may abide it ! ' This close scrutiny of our 



108 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

time may well make us tremble, all of us who have ad- 
vanced more than a few steps in life ; for God will judge 
us otherwise than as he judges the lilies of the field. I 
have never been able to understand the security of those 
who placed their whole reliance, in presenting themselves 
before God, upon a good conduct in the ordinary rela- 
tions of human life. As if all our duties were confined 
within the narrow sphere of this world ! To be a good 
parent, a good child, a good citizen, a good brother or 
sister, is not enough to procure entrance into the king- 
dom of heaven. God demands other things besides these 
kindly social virtues of him whom he means to crown with 
an eternity of glory." 

And, with this zeal for the spirit and power of religion, 
what prudence in her counsels of religious practice ; what 
discernment, what measure ! She has been speaking of 
the charm of the Lives of the Saints, and she goes on : — 

'^Notwithstanding this, the Lives of the Sai?its seem to 
me, for a great many people, dangerous reading. I would 
not recommend them to a young girl, or even to some 
women who are no longer young. What one reads has such 
power over one's feelings ; and these, even in seeking God, 
sometimes go astray. Alas, we have seen it in poor C.^s 
case. What care one ought to take with a young person ; 
with what she reads, what she writes, her society, her 
prayers, — all of them matters wliich demand a mother's ten- 
der watchfulness ! I remember many things I did at four- 
teen, which my mother, had she lived, would not have let 
me do. I would have done anything for God's sake ; I 
would have cast myself into an oven, and assuredly things 
like that are not God's will ; He is not pleased by the hurt 
one does to one's health through that ardent but ill-regu- 
lated piety which, while it impairs the body, often leaves 
many a fault flourishing. And, therefore. Saint Francois 
de Sales used to say to the nuns who asked his leave to 
go bare-foot : Change your brains and keep your shoes.'" 

Meanwhile Maurice, in a five years' absence, and amid 
the distractions of Paris, lost, or seemed to his sister to 
close, something of his fondness for his home and its in 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 109 

mates : he certainly lost his early religious habits and feel- 
ings. It is on this latter loss that Mdlle. de Guerin's 
journal oftenest touches, — with infinite delicacy, but with 
infinite anguish: — 

^^ Oh, the agony of being in fear for a soul's salvation, 
who can describe it ! That which caused our Saviour the 
keenest suffering, in the agony of his Passion, was not so 
much the thought of the torments he was to endure, as the 
thought that these torments would be of no avail for a 
multitude of sinners ; for all those who set themselves 
against their redemption, or who do not care for it. The 
mere anticipation of this obstinacy and this heedlessness 
has power to make sorrowful, even unto death, the divine 
Son of Man. And this feeling all Christian souls, accord- 
ing to the measure of faith and love granted them, more 
or less share." 

Maurice returned to Le Cayla in the summer of 1837, and 
passed six months there. This meeting entirely restored 
the union between him and his family. '^ These six months 
with us," writes his sister, ^Mie ill, and finding himself 
so loved by us all, had entirely reattached him to us. 
Five years without seeing us, had perhaps made him a 
little lose sight of our affection for him ; having found it 
again, he met it with all the strength of his owa. He had 
so firmly renewed, before he left us, all family-ties, that 
nothing but death could have broken them." The separa- 
tion in religious matters between the brother and sister 
gradually diminished, and before Maurice died it had 
ceased. I have elsewhere spoken of Maurice's religious 
feeling and his character. It is probable that his diver- 
gence from his sister in this sphere of religion was never 
so wide as she feared, and that his reunion with her was 
never so complete as she hoped. " His errors were 
passed," she says, "his illusions were cleared away ; by 
the call of his nature, by original disposition, he had 
come back to sentiments of order. I knew all, I followed 
each of his steps ; out of the fiery sphere of the passions 
(which held him but a little moment) I saw him pass into 
the sphere of the Christian life. It was a beautiful soul. 



110 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the soul of Maurice." But the ilhiess which had caused 
liis return to Le Cayla reappeared after he got back to 
Paris in the winter of 1837-8. Again he seemed to recover ; 
and his marriage with a young Creole lady, Mdlle. Caroline 
de Gervain, took place in the autumn of 1838. At the 
end of September in that year Mdlle. de Guerin had 
joined her brother in Paris ; she was present at his mar- 
riage, and stayed with him and his wife for some months 
afterwards. Her journal recommences in April 1839. 
Zealously as she promoted her brother's marriage, cordial 
as were her relations with her sister-in-law, it is evident 
that a sense of loss, of loneliness, invades her, and some- 
times weighs her down. She writes in her journal on the 
4th of May :— 

'' God knows when we shall see one another again ! My 
own Maurice, must it be our lot to live apart, to find 
that this marriage which I had so much share in bringing 
about, which I hoped would keep us so much together, 
leaves us more asunder than ever ? For the present and 
for the future, this troubles me more than I can say. My 
sympathies, my inclinations, carry me more towards you 
than towards any other member of our family. I have the 
misfortune to be fonder of you than of anything else in the 
world, and my heart had from of old built in you its 
happiness. Youth gone and life declining, I looked for- 
ward to quitting the scene with Maurice. At any time of 
life a great affection is a great happiness ; the spirit comes 
to take refuge in it entirely. delight and joy which will 
never be your sister's portion ! Only in the direction of 
God shall I find an issue for my heart to love as it has the 
notion of loving, as it has the power of loving." 

For such complainings, in which there is undoubtedly 
something morbid, — complainings which she herself 
blamed, to which she seldom gave way, but which, in pre- 
senting her character, it is not just to put wholly out of 
sight, — she was called by the news of an alarming return 
of her brother's illness. For some days the entries in the 
journal show her agony of apprehension. ^' He conghs, 
he coughs still ! Those words keep echoing forever in my 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. m 

ears, and pnrsne me wherever I go ; I cannot look at the 
leaves on the trees without thinking that the winter will 
come, and then the consumptive die." She went to 
him, and brought him back by slow stages to Le Cayla, 
dying. He died on the 19th of July 1839. 

Thenceforward the energy of life ebbed in her ; but the 
main chords of her being, the chord of affection, the chord 
of religious longing, the chord of intelligence, the chord 
of sorrow, gave, so long as they answered to the touch at 
all, a deeper and finer sound than ever. Always she saw 
before her, '^that beloved pale face;" "that beautiful 
head, with all its different expressions, smiling, suffering, 
dying," regarded her always : — 

" I have seen his coffin in the same room, in the same 
spot where I remember seeing, when I was a very little 
girl, his cradle, when I was brought home from Gaillac, 
where I was then staying, for his christening. This chris- 
tening was a grand one, full of rejoicing, more than that 
of any of the rest of ns ; specially marked. I enjoyed 
myself greatly, and went back to Gaillac next day, charmed 
with my new little brother. Two years afterwards I 
came home, and brought with me a frock for him of my 
own making. I dressed him in the frock, and took 
him out with me along by the warren at the north of the 
house, and there he walked a few steps alone, — his first 
walking alone, — and I ran with delight to tell my mother 
the news : ' Maurice, Maurice has begun to walk by him- 
self ! ' — Eecollections which, coming back to-day, break 
one's heart." 

The shortness and suffering of her brother's life filled 
her with an agony of pity. '' Poor beloved soul, you have 
had hardly any happiness here below ; your life has been 
so short, your repose so rare. God, uphold me, establish 
my heart in thy faith ! Alas, I have too little of this suj)- 
porting me ! How we have gazed at him and loved him, 
and kissed him, — his wife, and we, his sisters ; he lying 
lifeless in his bed, his head on the pillow as if he were 
asleep ! Then we followed him to the churchyard, to the 
grave, to his last resting-place, and prayed over him, and 



112 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

wept over him ; and we are here again, and I am writing 
to him again, as if he were staying away from home, as if 
he were in Paris. My beloved one, can it be, shall we 
never see one another again on earth ? " 

But in heaven ? — and here, though love and hope finally 
prevailed, the very passion of the sister's longing sometimes 
inspired torturing inquietudes : — 

'^I am broken down with misery. I want to see him. 
Every moment I pray to God to grant me this grace. 
Heaven, the world of sprits, is it so far from us ? depth, 
mystery of the other life which separates us ! I, who 
was so eagerly anxious about him, who wanted so to know 
all that happened to him, — wherever he may be now, it is 
over ! I follow him unto the three abodes ; I stop wistfully 
before the place of bliss, I pass on to the place of suffer- 
ing, — to the gulf of fire. My God, my God, no ! Not 
there let my brother be ! not there ! And he is not : his 
soul, the soul of Maurice, among the lost . . . horrible 
fear, no ! But in purgatory, where the soul is cleansed by 
suffering, where the failings of the heart are expiated, the 
doubtings of the spirit, the half-yieldings to evil ? Per- 
haps my brother is there and suffers, and calls tons amidst 
his anguish of repentance, as he used to call to us amidst 
his bodily suffering : ^ Help me, you who love me.' Yes, 
beloved one, by prayer. I will go and pray ; prayer has 
has been such a power to me, and I will pray to the end. 
Prayer ! Oh ! and prayer for the dead ; it is the dew of 
purgatory." 

Often, alas, the gracious dew would not fall ; the air 
of her soul was parched ; the arid wind, which was some- 
where in the depths of her being, blew. She marks in 
her journal the 1st of May, ^* this return of the loveliest 
month in the year," only to keep up the old habit ; even 
the month of May can no longer give her any pleasure : 
^^ Tout est change — all is changed." She is crushed by 
^' the misery which has nothing good in it, the tearless, 
dry misery, which bruises the heart like a hammer." 

'* I am dying to everything. I am dying of a slow moral 
agony, a condition of unutterable suffering. Lie there. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. II3 

my poor journal ! be forgotten with all this world which 
is fading away from me. I will write here no more until 
I come to life again, until God re-awakens me out of this 
tomb in which my soul lies buried. Maurice, my beloved ! 
it was not thus with me when I had you ! The thought 
of Maurice could revive me from the most profound de- 
pression : to have him in the world was enough for me. 
With Maurice, to be buried alive would have not seemed 
dull to me.'' 

And, as a burden to this funeral strain, the old vide et 
neant of Bossuet, profound, solemn, sterile : — 

^' So beautiful in the morning, and in the evening, that ! 
how the thought disenchants one, and turns one from the 
world ! I can understand that Spanish grandee who, 
after lifting up the winding-sheet of a beautiful queen, 
threw himself into the cloister and became a great saint. 
I wouUl have all my friends at La Trappe, in the interest 
of their eternal welfare. Not that in the world one can- 
not be saved, not that there are not in the world duties to 
be discharged as sacred and as beautiful as there are in the 
cloister, but . . . . " 

And there she stops, and a day or two afterwards her 
journal comes to an end. A few fragments, a few letters 
carry us on a little later, but after the 23d of August 1845 
there is nothing. To make known her brother's genius to 
the world was the one task she set herself after his death ; 
in 1840 came Madame Sand's noble tribute to him in the 
Revue cles Deux Moncles ; then followed projects of raising 
a yet more enduring monument to his fame, by collecting 
and publishing his scattered compositions ; these projects 
I have already said, were baffled ; — Mdlle. de Guerin's 
letter of the 22d of August 1845 relates to this disap- 
pointment. In silence, during nearly three years more, 
she faded away at Le Cayla. She died on the 31st of May 
1848. 

M. Trebutien has accomplished the pious task in which 

Mdlle. de Guerin was baffled, and has established Maurice's 

fame ; by publishing this journal he has established 

En genie's also. She was very different from her brother ; 

8 



114 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

but she too, like him, had that in her which preserves a 
reputation. Her soul had the same characteristic quality 
as his talent, — distinction. Of this quality the world is 
impatient ; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates 
it ; — it ends by receiving its influence, and by undergoing 
its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world's 
blunders, and fixes the world's ideals. It procures that 
the popular poet shall not finally pass for a Pindar, nor 
the popular historian for a Tacitus, nor the popular 
preacher for a Bossuet. To the circle of spirits marked 
by this rare quality, Maurice and Eugenie de Gnerin be- 
long ; they will take their place in the sky which these 
inhabit, and shine close to one another, lucida sidera. 



V. 

HEINKICH HEINE. 

^' I KITOW not if I deserve that a laurel- wreath should 
one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have 
loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I 
have never attached any great value to poetical fame ; and 
I trouble myself very little whether people praise my 
verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a siuord ; for 
I was a brave soldier in the Liberation War of humanity." 

Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared quite 
as much as his brethren of the genus irriiahile whether 
people praised his verses or blamed them. And he was 
very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly decorate his 
tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather than with the 
emblem of the sword. Still, for his contemporaries, for 
us, for the Europe of the present century, he is significant 
chiefly for the reason which he himself in the words just 
quoted assigns. He is significant because he was, if not 
pre-eminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most effective sol- 
dier in the Liberation War of humanity. 

To ascertain the master-current in the literature of an 
epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor currents, is 
one of the critic's highest functions ; in discharging it he 
shows how far he possesses the most indispensable quality 
of his office, — justness of spirit. The living writer who 
has done most to make England acquainted with German 
authors, a man of genius, but to whom precisely this one 
quality of justness of spirit is perhaps wanting, — I mean 
Mr. Carlyle, — seems to me in the result of his labors on 
German literature to afford a proof how very necessary to 
the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken admi- 
rably of Goethe ; but then Goethe stands before all men's 



116 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

eyes, the manifest center of German literature ; and from 
this central source many rivers flow. Which of these rivers 
is the main stream ? which of the courses of spirit which 
we see active in Goethe is the course which will most in- 
fluence the future, and attract and be continued by the 
most powerful of Goethe's successors ? — that is the question. 
Mr. Carlyle attaches, it seems to me, far too much impor- 
tance to the romantic school of Germany, — Tieck, Novalis, 
Jean Paul Eichter, — and gives to these writers, really 
gifted as two, at any rate, of them are, an undue promi- 
nence. These writers, and others with aims and a general 
tendency the same as theirs, are not the real inheritors 
and continuators of Goethe's power ; the current of their 
activity is not the main current of German literature after 
Goethe. Far more in Heine's works flows this main cur- 
rent, Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Richter, is 
the continuator of that which, in Goethe's varied activity, 
is the most powerful and vital ; on Heine, of all German 
authors who survived Goethe, incomparably the largest 
portion of Goethe's mantle fell. I do not forget that when 
Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine, 
though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not 
shone forth with all his strength ; I do not forget, too, 
that after ten or twenty years many things may come out 
plain before the critic which before were hard to be dis- 
cerned by him ; and assuredly no one would dream of im- 
puting it as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years ago 
he mistook the central current in German literature, over- 
looked the rising Heine, and attached undue importance 
to that romantic school which Heine was to destroy ; one 
may rather note it as a misfortune, sent perhaps as a deli- 
cate chastisement to a critic, who, — man of genius as he 
is, and no one recognizes his genius more admirably than 
I do, — has, for the functions of the critic, a little too much 
of the self-will and eccentricity of a genuine son of Great 
Britain. 

Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important 
German successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's 
most important line of activity. And which of Goethe's 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1X7 

lines of activity is this ? — His line of activity as *' a soldier 
in the war of liberation of humanity." 

Heine himself would hardly have admitted this affiliation, 
though he was far too powerful-minded a man to decry, 
with some of the vulgar German liberals, Goethe's genius. 
"The wind of the Paris Kevolution," he writes after the 
three days of 1830, " blew about the candles a little in the 
dark night of Germany, so that the red curtains of a Ger- 
man throne or two caught fire ; but the old watchmen, 
who do the police of the German kingdoms, are already 
bringing out the fire engines, and will keep the candles 
closer snuffed for the future. Poor, fast-bound German 
people, lose not all heart in thy bonds ! The fashionable 
coating of ice melts off from my heart, my soul quivers 
and my eyes burn, and that is a disadvantageous state of 
things for a writer, who should control his subject-matter 
and keep himself beautifully objective, as the artistic 
school would have us, and as Goethe has done ; he has 
come to be eighty years old doing this, and minister, and 
in good condition : — poor German people ! that, is thy 
greatest man ! " 

But hear Goethe himself : " If I were to say what I had 
really been to the Germans in general, and to the young 
German poets in particular, I should say I had been their 
liheratoi'.'' 

Modern times find themselves with an immense system 
of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, cus- 
toms, rules, which have come to them from times not 
modern. In this system their life has to be carried for- 
ward ; yet they have a sense that this system is not of their 
own creation, that it by no means corresponds exactly with 
the wants of their actual life, that, for them, it is cus- 
tomary, not rational. The awakening of this sense is the 
awakening of the modern spirit. The modern spirit is 
now awake almost everywhere ; the sense of want of cor- 
respondence between the forms of modern Europe and its 
spirit, between the new wine of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries, and the old bottles of the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries; or even of the sixteenth and seventeenth. 



118 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

almost every one now perceives ; it is no longer dangerous 
to affirm that this want of correspondence exists ; people 
are even beginning to be shy of denying it. To remove 
this want of correspondence is beginning to be the settled 
endeavor of most persons of good sense. Dissolvents of 
the old European system of dominant ideas and facts we 
must all be, all of us who have any power of working ; 
what we have to study is that we may not be acrid dissol- 
vents of it. 

And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an age 
when there were fewer of them than at present, proceed 
in his task of dissolution, of liberation of the modern 
European from the old routine ? He shall tell us himself. 
'* Through me the German poets have become aware that, 
as man must live from within outwards, so the artist must 
work from within outwards, seeing that, make what con- 
tortions he will, he can only bring to light his own indi- 
viduality. I can clearly mark where this influence of mine 
has made itself felt ; there arises out of it a kind of poetry 
of nati^re, and only in this way is it possible to be original.'^ 

My voice shall never be joined to those which decry 
Goethe, and if it is said that the foregoing is a lame 
and impotent conclusion to Goethe's declaration that 
he had been the liberator of the Germans in general, 
and of the young German poets in particular, I say it is 
not. Goethe's profound, imperturbable naturalism is 
absolutely fatal to all routiue thinking, he puts the 
standard, once for all, inside every man instead of outside 
him ; when he is told, such a thing must be so, there is im- 
mense authority and custom in favor of its being so, it has 
been held to be so for a thousand years, he answers with 
Olympian politeness, *^ But is it so ? is it so to me f " Noth- 
ing could be more really subversive of the foundations 
on which the old European order rested ; and it may be 
remarked that no persons are so radically detached from 
this order, no persons so thoroughly modern, as those 
who have felt Goethe's influence most deeply. If it is 
said that Goethe professes to have in this way deeply in- 
fluenced but a few persons, and those persons poets, one 



HEINRICH HEINE. 119 

may answer that he could have taken no better way to 
secure, in the end, the ear of the world ; for poetry is 
simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective 
mode of saying things, and hence its importance. Never- 
theless the process of liberation, as Goethe worked it, though 
sure, is undoubtedly slow ; he came, as Heine says, to be 
eighty years old in thus working it, and at the end of that 
time the old Middle-Age machine was still creaking on, 
the thirty German courts and their chamberlains subsisted 
in all their glory ; Goethe himself was a minister, and the 
visible triumph of the modern spirit over prescription and 
routine seemed as far off as ever. It was the year 1830 ; the 
German sovereigns had passed the preceding fifteen years in' 
breaking the promises of freedom they had made to their 
subjects when they wanted their help in the final struggle 
with Napoleon. Great events were happening in France ; 
the revolution, defeated in 1815, had arisen from its defeat, 
and was wresting from its adversaries the power. Hein- 
rich Heine, a young man of genius, born at Hamburg,* 
and with all the culture of Germany, but by race-^a Jew ; 
with warm sympathies for France, whose revolution had 
given to his race the rights of citizenship, and whose rule 
had been, as is well known, popular in the Rhine provinces, 
where he passed his youth ; with a passionate admiration 
for the great French Emperor, with a passionate contempt 
for the sovereigns who had overthrown him, for their 
agents, and for their policy, — Heinrich Heine was in 1830 
in no humor for any such gradual process of liberation 
from the old order of things as that which Goethe had 
followed. His counsel was for open war. Taking that 
terrible modern weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed 
the remainder of his life in one fierce battle. What was 
that battle ? the reader will ask. It was a life and death 
battle with Philistinism, 

Philistinism / — we have not the expression in English. 
Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much 
of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of 
solecisms ; and here, at the very headquarters of Goliath, 

* Heine's birthplace was not Hamburg, but Dusseldorf . — Ed. 



120 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have adopted 
the term Spicier (grocer), to designate the sort of being 
whom the Germans designate by the Philistine ; but the 
French term, — besides that it casts a slur upon a respect- 
able class, composed of living and susceptible members, 
while the original Philistines are dead and buried long 
ago, — is really, I think, in itself much less apt and ex- 
pressive than the Grerman term. Efforts have been made 
to obtain in English some term equivalent to Philister 
or epicier ; Mr. Oarlyle has made several such efforts : 
" respectability with its thousand gigs," he says ; — well, 
the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle 
means, a Philistine. However, the word respectable is 
far too valuable a word to be thus perverted from its 
proper meaning ; if the English are ever to have a word for 
the thing we are speaking of, — and so prodigious are the 
changes which the modern spirit is introducing, that even 
we English shall perhaps one day come to want such a 
word, — I think we had much better take the term Philis- 
tine itself. 

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of 
those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, un- 
enlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children 
of the light. The party of change, the would-be remod- 
elers of the old traditional European order, the invokers 
of reason against custom, the representatives of the mod- 
ern spirit in every sphere where it is applicable, regarded 
themselves, with the robust self-confidence natural to re- 
formers as a chosen people, as children of the light. They 
regarded their adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to 
routine, enemies to light ; stupid and oppressive, but at 
the same time very strong. This explains the love which 
Heine, that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for France ; 
it explains the preference which he gives to France over 
Germany: *^* the French," he says, '*^ are the chosen 
people of the new religion, its first gospels and dogmas 
have been drawn up in their language ; Paris is the 
new Jerusalem, and the Ehine is the Jordan which di- 
vides the consecrated land of freedom from the land of the 



HEINRICH HEINE. 121 

Philistines/' He means that the French, as a people, 
have shown more accessibility to ideas than any other 
people ; that prescription and routine have had less hold 
upon them than upon any other people ; that they have 
shown most readiness to move and to alter at the bid- 
ding (real or supposed) of reason. This explains, too, 
the detestation which Heine had for the English : " I 
might settle in England," he says, in his exile, ''if it 
were not that I should find there two things, coal-smoke and 
Englishmen; I cannot abide either." What he hated in 
English was the '• achtbrittische Beschranktheit," as he 
calls it, — the genuine British narroioness. In truth, the 
English, profoundly as they have modified the old Mid- 
dle-Age order, great as is the liberty which they have 
secured for themselves, have in all their changes pro- 
ceeded, to use a familiar expression, by the rule of thumb ; 
what was intolerably inconvenient to them they have 
suppressed, and as they have suppressed it, not because 
it was irrational, but because it was practically in- 
convenient, they have seldom in suppressing it ap- 
pealed to reason, but always, if possible, to some pre- 
cedent, or form, or letter, which served as a convenient 
instrument for their purpose, and which saved them 
from the necessity of recurring to general principles. 
They have thus become, in a certain sense, of all people 
the most inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of 
them ; inaccessible to them, because of their want of 
familiarity with them ; and impatient of them because 
they have g.ot on so well without them, that they despise 
those who, not having got on as well as themselves, still 
make a fuss for what they themselves have done so well 
without. But there has certainly followed from hence, 
in this country, somewhat of a general depression of pare 
intelligence : Philistia has come to be thought by us the 
true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that ; the 
born lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must 
feel in this country, that the sky over his head is of brass 
and iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values 
reason, the idea, in and for themselves ; he values them, 



122 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

irrespectively of the practical conveniences which their 
triumph may obtain for him ; and the man who regards 
the possession of these practical conveniences as something 
sufficient in itself, something which compensates for the 
absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, 
a Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly 
attacks the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism he 
hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conser- 
vatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in the 
name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is thus 
for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aristocracy 
whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six fingers on 
every hand and on every foot six toes, four-and-twenty 
in number : a Philistine, the staff of whose spear is like a 
weaver's beam. Thus he speaks of him: — 

" While I translate Cobbett's words, the man himself 
comes bodily before my mind's eye, as I saw him at that 
uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, with 
his scolding red face and his radical laugh, in which venom- 
ous hate mingles with a mocking exultation at his enemies' 
surely approaching downfall. He is a chained cur, who 
falls with equal fury on every one whom he does not know, 
often bites the best friend of the house in his calves, barks 
incessantly, and just because of this incessantness of his 
barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks at a 
real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves who plun- 
der England do not think it necessary to throw the growl- 
ing Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth. This makes the 
dog furiously savage, and he shows all his hungry teeth. 
Poor old Cobbett ! England's dog ! I have no love for 
thee, for every vulgar nature my soul abhors ; but thou 
touchest me to the inmost soul with pity, as I see how 
thou strainest in vain to break loose and to get at those 
thieves, who make off with their booty before thy very 
eyes, and mock at thy fruitless springs and thine impo- 
tent howling." 

There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A chosen 
circle of children of the modern spirit, perfectly emanci- 
pated from prejudice and commonplace, regarding the 



HEINRICH HEINE. 123 

ideal side of things in all its efforts for change, passionately 
despising half-measures and condescension to human folly 
and obstinacy, — with a bewildered, timid, torpid multi- 
tude behind, — conducts a country to the government of 
Herr von Bismarck. A nation regarding the practical side 
of things in its efforts for change, attacking not what is 
irrational, but what is pressingly inconvenient, and attack- 
itg this as one body, '^ moving altogether if it move at 
all," and treating children of light like the very harshest 
of stepmothers, comes to the prosperity and liberty of 
modern England. For all that, however, Philistia (let me 
say it again) is not the true promised land, as we English 
commonly imagine it to be ; and our excessive neglect of 
the idea, and consequent inaptitude for it, threatens us, 
at a moment when the idea is beginning to exercise a real 
power in human society, with serious future inconvenience, 
and, in the meanwhile, cuts us off from the sympathy of 
other nations, which feel its power more than we do. 

But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire- 
engines of the German governments were too much for 
his direct efforts at incendiarism. '^ What demon drove 
me," he cries, '^ to write my Reiseiilder, to edit a news- 
paper, to plague myself with our time and its interests, to 
try and shake the poor German Hodge out of his thousand 
years' sleep in his hole ? What good did I get by it ? 
Hodge opened his eyes, only to shut them again imme- 
diately ; he yawned, only to begin snoring again the next 
minute louder than ever ; he stretched his stiff ungainly 
limbs, only to sink down again directly afterwards, and 
lie like a dead man in the old bed of his accustomed habits. 
I must have rest ; but where am I to find a resting-place ? 
In Germany I can no longer stay." 

This is Heine's jesting account of his own efforts to 
rouse Germany : now for his pathetic account of them ; it 
is because he unites so much wit with so much pathos that 
he is so effective a writer : — 

'' The Emperor Charles the Fifth sate in sore straits, 
in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. All his knights 
and courtiers had forsaken him ; not one came to his help. 



124 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

I know not if he had at that time the cheese face with which 
Holbein has painted him for us. But I am sure that 
under lip of his, with its contempt for mankind, stuck out 
even more than it does in his portraits. How could he but 
contemn the tribe which in the sunshine of his pros- 
perity had fawned on him so devotedly, and now, in his 
dark distress, left him all alone ? Then suddenly his door 
opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as he 
threw back his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him his faith- 
ful Conrad von der Eosen, the court jester. This man 
brought him comfort and counsel, and he was the court 
jester ! 

'^ German fatherland ! dear German people ! I am 
thy Conrad von der Rosen. The man whose proper busi- 
ness was to amuse thee, and who in good times should have 
catered only for thy mirth, makes his way into thy prison 
in time of need ; here, under my cloak, I bring thee thy 
scepter and crown ; dost thou not recognize Die, my 
Kaiser ? If I cannot free thee, I will at least comfort thee, 
and thou shalt at least have one with thee who will prat- 
tle with thee about thy sorest affliction, and whisper cour- 
age to thee, and love thee, and whose best joke and best 
blood shall be at thy service. For thou, my people, art 
the true Kaiser, the true lord of the land ; thy will is sov- 
ereign, and more legitimate far than that purple Tel est 
notre plaisiVy which invokes a divine right with no better 
warrant than the anointings of shaven and shorn jugglers ; 
thy will, my people, is the sole rightful source of power. 
Though now thou liest down in thy bonds, yet in the end 
will thy rightful cause prevail ; the day of deliverance is 
at hand, a new time is beginning. My Kaiser, the night 
is over, and out there glows the ruddy dawn. 

*' * Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mistaken ; 
perhaps thou takest a headsman's gleaming axe for the 
sun, and the red of dawn is only blood.' 

*' * No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising in 
the west ; these six thousand years it has always risen in 
the east ; it is high time there should come a change.' 

'* * Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost the 



HEINRICH HEINE. 125 

bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such an odd look, 
that red cap of thine ! ' 

** ' Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake my 
head so hard and fierce, that the fool's bells have dropped 
off my cap ; the cap is none the worse for that.' 

'' ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that noise 
of breaking and cracking outside there ? ' 

'^ * Hush ! that is the saw and the carpenter's axe, and 
soon the doors of thy prison will be burst open, and thou 
wilt be free, my Kaiser ! ' 

'''Am I then really Kaiser? Ah, I forgot, it is the 
fool who tells me so ! ' 

" 'Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy prison 
makes thee so desponding ! when once thou hast got thy 
rights again, thou wilt feel once more the bold imperial 
blood in thy veins, and thou wilt be proud like a Kaiser, 
and violent, and gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and 
ungrateful, as princes are.' 

" ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am free, 
what wilt thou do then ? ' 

" ' I will then sew new bells on to my cap.' 

" ' And how shall I recompense thy fidelity ? " 

" ' Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a 
ditch!'" 

I wish to mark Heine's place in modern European litera- 
ture, the scope of his activity, and his value. I cannot 
attempt to give here a detailed account of his life, or a 
description of his separate works. In May 1831 he went 
over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed himself in his new 
Jerusalem, Paris. There, henceforward, he lived, going 
in general to some French watering-place in the summer, 
but making only one or two short visits to Germany during 
the rest of his life. His works, in verse and prose, suc- 
ceeded each other without stopping ; a collected edition 
of them, filling seven closely-printed octavo volumes, has 
been published in America ; ^ in the collected editions of 
few people's works is there so little to skip. Those who 
wish for a single good specimen of him should read his 
1 A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany. 



126 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

first important work, the work which made his reputation, 
the EeiseMlder, or '^ Traveling Sketches : " prose and 
verse, wit and seriousness, are mingled in it, and the 
mingling of these is characteristic of Heine, and is no- 
where to be seen practised more naturally and happily 
than in his Reisehilder. In 1847 his health, which till 
then had always been perfectly good, gave way. He had 
a kind of paralytic stroke. His malady proved to be a 
softening of the spinal marrow : it was incurable ; it made 
rapid progress. In May 1848, not a year after his first 
attack, he went out of doors for the last time ; but his 
disease took more than eight years to kill him. For 
nearly eight years he lay helpless on a couch, with the use 
of his limbs gone, wasted almost to the proportions of a 
child, wasted so that a woman could carry him about ; 
the sight of one eye lost, that of the other greatly dimmed, 
and requiring, that it might be exercised, to have the 
palsied eyelid lifted and held up by the finger ; all this, 
and, besides this, suffering at short intervals paroxysms 
of nervous agony. I have said he was not pre-eminently 
brave ; but in the astonishing force of spirit with which 
he retained his activity of mind, even his gayety, amid all 
his suffering, and went on composing with undiminished 
fire to the last, he was truly brave. Nothing could clog 
that aerial lightness. '' Pouvez-vous siffler ? " his doctor 
asked him one day, when he was almost at his last gasp ; — 
'^ siffler," as every one knows, has the double meaning of 
to ivJiistle and to hiss : — '^ Helas ! non," was his whispered 
answer ; " pas meme une comedie de M. Scribe ! " M. 
Scribe is, or was, the favorite dramatist of the French 
Philistine. '* My nerves,^' he said to some one who asked 
him about them in 1855, the year of the great Exhibition 
in Paris, ''my nerves are of that quite singularly remark- 
able miserableness of nature, that I am convinced they 
would get at the Exhibition the grand medal for pain and 
misery." He read all the medical books which treated of 
his complaint. ''But," said he to some one who found 
him thus engaged, " what good this reading is to do me I 
doiTt know, except that it will qualify me to give lectures 



HEINRICH HEINE. 127 

in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about 
diseases of the spinal marrow." What a matter of grim 
serionsness are onr own ailments to most of ns ! yet with 
this gayety Heine treated his to the end. That end, so 
long in coming, came at last. Heine died on the 17th of 
Febrnary, 1856, at the age of fifty-eight. By his will he 
forbade that his remains should be transported to Ger- 
many. He lies buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, at 
Paris. 

His direct political action was null, and this is neither 
to be wondered at nor regretted ; direct political action is 
not the true function of literature, and Heine was a born 
man of letters. Even in his favorite France the turn 
taken by public affairs was not at all what he wished, 
though he read French politics by no means as we in 
England, most of us, read them. He thought things 
were tending there to the triumph of communism ; and to 
a champion of the idea like Heine, what there is gross and 
narrow in communism was very repulsive. ^^Itisallof 
no use," he cried on his death-bed, " the future belongs 
to our enemies, the Communists, and Louis Napoleon is 
their John the Baptist." ^^ And yet," — he added with all 
his old love for that remarkable entity, so full of attrac- 
tion for him, so profoundly unknown in England, the 
French people, — ^^do not believe that God lets all this go 
forward merely as a grand comedy. Even though the 
Communists deny him to-day, he knows better than they 
do, that a time will come when they will learn to believe 
in him." After 1831, his hopes of soon upsetting the 
German Governments had died away, and his propagand- 
ism took another, a more truly literary, character. It 
took the character of an intrepid application of the modern 
spirit to literature. To the ideas with which the burning 
questions of modern life filled him, he made all his subject- 
matter minister. He touched all the great points in the 
career of the human race, and here he but followed the 
tendency of the wide culture of Germany ; but he touched 
them with a wand which brought them all under a light 
wliere the modern eve cares most to see them, and here he 



128 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

gave a lesson to the culture of German}', — so wide, so im- 
partial, that it is apt to become slack and powerless, and 
to lose itself in its materials for want of a strong central 
idea round which to group all its other ideas. So the 
mystic and romantic school of Germany lost itself in the 
Middle Ages, was overpowered by their influence, came to 
ruin by its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a 
far profounder sense of the mystic and romantic charm of 
the Middle Age than Gcerres, or Brentano, or Arnim, 
Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also 
much more than a romantic poet ; he is a great modern 
poet, he is not conquered by the Middle Age, he has a 
talisman by which he can feel, — along with but above the 
power of the fascinating Middle Age itself, — the power of 
modern ideas. 

A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough in 
saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, with 
beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the cheerful 
noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle Age took to 
flight. But this is rather too French an account of the 
matter. Germany, that vast mine of ideas, had no need 
to import ideas, as such, from any foreign country ; and 
if Heine had carried ideas, as such, from France into 
Germany, he would but have been carrying coals to New- 
castle. But that for which France, far less meditative 
than Germany, is eminent, is the prompt, ardent, and 
practical application of an idea, when she seizes it, in all 
departments of human activity which admit it. And that 
in which Germany most fails, and by failing in which she 
appears so helpless and impotent, is just the practical 
application of her innumerable ideas. '' When Candide," 
says Heine himself, " came to Eldorado, he saw in the 
streets a number of boys who were playing with gold- 
nuggets instead of marbles. This degree of luxury made 
him imagine that they must be the king's children, and 
he was not a little astonished when he found that in 
Eldorado gold-nuggets are of no more value than marbles 
are with us, and that the schoolboys play with them. A 
similar thing happened to a friend of mine, a foreigner, 



HEINRICH HEINE. 129 

when he came to Germany and first read German books. 
He was perfectly astounded at the wealth of ideas which 
he found in them ; but he soon remarked that ideas in 
Germany are as plentiful as gold-nuggets in Eldorado, and 
that those writers whom he had taken for intellectual 
princes, were in reality only common schoolboys/' 
Heine was, as he called himself, a '' Child of the French 
Revolution," an ** Initiator," because he vigorously assured 
the Germans that ideas were not counters or marbles, to 
be played with for their own sake ; because he exhibited 
in literature modern ideas applied with the utmost free- 
dom, clearness, and originality. And therefore he de- 
clared that the great task of his life had been the endeavor 
to establish a cordial relation between France and Ger- 
many. It is because he thus operates a junction between 
the French spirit, and German ideas and German culture, 
that he founds something new, opens a fresh period, and 
deserves the attention of criticism far more than the Ger- 
man poets his contemporaries, who merely continue an 
old period till it expires. It may be predicted that in the 
literature of other countries, too, the French spirit is 
destined to make its influence felt, — as an element, in 
alliance with the native spirit, of novelty and movement, 
— as it has made its influence felt in German literature ; 
fifty years hence a critic will be demonstrating to our 
grandchildren how this phenomenon has come to pass. 

We in England, in our great burst of literature during 
the first thirty years of the present century, had no mani- 
festation of the modern spirit, as this spirit manifests 
itself in Goethe's works or Heine's. And the reason is 
not far to seek. We had neither the German wealth of 
ideas, nor the French enthusiasm for applying ideas. 
There reigned in the mass of the nation that inveterate 
inaccessibility to ideas, that Philistinism, — to use the 
German nickname, — which reacts even on the individual 
genius that is exempt from it. In our greatest literary 
epoch, that of the Elizabethan age, English society at 
large was accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was 
vivified by them, to a degree which has never been reached 
9 



J 30 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

in England since. Hence the unique greatness in English 
literature of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. They 
were powerfully upheld by the intellectual life of their 
nation ; they applied freely in literature the then modern 
ideas, — the ideas of the Eenascence and the Eeformation. 
A few years afterwards the great English middle class, the 
kernel of the nation, the class whose intelligent sympathy 
had upheld a Shakespeare, entered the prison of Puritan- 
ism, and had the key turned on its spirit there for two 
hundred years. He enlm^geth a nation, says Job, and 
straiteneth it again. 

In the literary movement of the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century the signal attempt to apply freely the 
modern spirit was made in England by two members of 
the aristocratic class, Byron and Shelley. Aristocracies 
are, as such, naturally impenetrable by ideas ; but their 
individual members have a high courage and a turn for 
breaking bounds ; and a man of genius, who is the born 
child of the idea, happening to be born in the aristocratic 
ranks, chafes against the obstacles which prevent him 
from freely developing it. But Byron and Shelley did not 
succeed in their attempt freely to apply the modern spirit 
in English literature ; they could not succeed in it ; the 
resistance to baffle them, the want of intelligent sympathy 
to guide and uphold them, were too great. Their literary 
creation, compared with the literary creation of Shake- 
speare and Spenser, compared with the literary creation 
of Goethe and Heine, is a failure. The best literary cre- 
ation of that time in England proceeded from men who 
did not make the same bold attempt as Byron and Shelley. 
What, in fact, was the career of the chief English men of 
letters, their contemporaries ? The gravest of them, 
Wordsworth, retired (in Middle-Age phrase) into a mon- 
astery. I mean, he plunged himself in the inward life, he 
voluntarily cut himself off from the modern spirit. Cole- 
ridge took to opium. Scott became the historiographer- 
royal of feudalism. Keats passionately gave himself up to 
;i sensuous genius, to his faculty for interpreting nature ; 
and he died of consumption at twenty-five. Wordsworth, 



HEINRICH HEINE. 131 

Scott, and Keats have left admirable works ; far more 
solid and complete works than those which Byron and 
Shelley have left. But their works have this defect, — 
they do not belong to that which is the main current of 
the literature of modern epochs, they do not apply modern 
ideas to life ; they constitute, therefore, mi7ior currents, 
and all other literary work of our day, however popular, 
which has the same defect, also constitutes but a minor 
current. Byron and Shelley will long be remembered, 
long after the inadequacy of their actual work is clearly 
recognized for their passionate, their Titanic effort to flow 
in the main stream of modern literature ; their names will 
be greater than their writings ; statmagni nomhiisumhra. 
Heine's literary good fortune was superior to that of 
Byron and Shelley. His theater of operations was Ger- 
many, whose Philistinism does not consist in her want of 
ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she teems with 
them and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble 
and hesitating application of modern ideas to life. Heine's 
intense modernism, his absolute freedom, his utter rejec- 
tion of stock classicism and stock romanticism, his bring- 
ing all things under the point of view of the nineteenth 
century, were understood and laid to, heart by Ger- 
many, through virtue of her immense, tolerant intellec- 
tualism, much as there was in all Heine said to affront 
and wound Germany. The wit and ardent modern spirit 
of France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the 
thought of Germany. This is what makes him so remark- 
able ; his wonderful clearness, lightness, and freedom, 
united with such power of feeling, and width of range. 
Is there anywhere keener wit than in his story of the 
French abbe who was his tutor, and who wanted to get 
from him that la religio7i is French for der Glaube : '' Six 
times did he ask me the question: ^ Henry, what is der 
Glaube in French ? ' and six times, and each time with a 
greater burst of tears, did I answer him — ' It is le credit.'' 
And at the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the 
infuriated questioner screamed out : ^ It is la religion ; ' 
and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and all .the other 



132 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

boys burst out laughing. Since that day I have never 
been able to hear la religio^i mentioned, without feeling a 
tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red 
with shame." Or in that comment on the fate of Pro- 
fessor Saalfeld, who had been addicted to writing furious 
pamphlets against Napoleon, and who was a professor at 
Gottingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of pedantry 
and Philistinism: "It is curious," says Heine, "the 
three greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them 
ended miserably. Castlereagh cut his own throat ; Louis 
the Eighteenth rotted upon his throne ; and Professor 
Saalfeld is still a professor at Gottingen." It is impossible 
to go beyond that. 

What wit, again, in that saying which every one has 
heard : "The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful 
wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, the 
German loves her like his old grandmother." But the 
turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so 
well known ; and it is by that turn he shows himself the 
born poet he is, — full of delicacy and tenderness, of inex- 
haustible resource, infinitely new and striking : — 

"And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things 
may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper 
with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope round 
her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smithfield. The 
inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his 
adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais 
Koyal after another. BiU the German will never quite 
abandon his old grandmother ; he will always keep for her 
a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her fairy 
stories to the listening children." 

Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both 
the weakness and the strength of Germany ; — pedantic, 
simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable Germany ? 

And Heine's verse, — his Lieder ? Oh, the comfort, 
after dealing with French people of genius, irresistibly 
impelled to try and express themselves in verse, launching 
out into a deed which destiny has sown with so many 
rocks for them, — the comfort of coming to a man of 



HEINRICH HEINE. I33 

genins, who finds in verse his freest and most perfect ex- 
pression, whose voyage over the deep of poetry destiny 
makes smooth ! After the rhythm, to us, at any rate, 
with the German paste in onr composition, so deeply un- 
satisfying, of — 

** Ah ! que me dites-vous, et que vous dit men ame? 
Que dit le ciel a I'aube et la flamme a la flamme ? '* 

what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like — 

" Take, oh, take those lips away, 
That so sweetly were forsworn — " 

or — 

" Siehst sehr sterbeblasslich aus, 
Doch getrost ! du bist zu Haus — " 

in which one's soul can take pleasure ! The magic of 
Heine's poetical form is incomparable ; he chiefly uses a 
form of old German popular poetry, a ballad-form which 
has more rapidity and grace than any ballad-form of ours ; 
he employs this form with the most exquisite lightness 
and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn ful- 
ness, pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms of 
popular poetry. Thus in Heine's poetry, too, one per- 
petually blends the impression of French modernism and 
clearness, with that of German sentiment and fulness ; 
and to give this blended impression is, as I have said, 
Heine's great characteristic. To feel it, one must read 
him ; he gives it in his form as well as in his contents, 
and by translation I can only reproduce it so far as his 
contents give it. But even the contents of many of his 
poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, 
for instance, is a poem in which he makes his profession 
of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, 
the child of some simple mining people having their hut 
among the pines at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who 
reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the 
Christian creed : — 

" Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while I yet 



134 ' ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

sate upon my mother's knee, I believed in God the Father, 
who rules up there in Heaven, good and great ; 

** Who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful 
men and women thereon ; who ordained for sun, moon, 
and stars their courses. 

" When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet a 
great deal more than this, and comprehended, and grew 
intelligent ; and I believe on the Son also ; 

"On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed love 
to us ; and, for his reward, as always happens, was cruci- 
fied by the people. 

*^Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have 
traveled much, my heart swells within me, and with my 
whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost. 

" The greatest miracles were of his working, and still 
greater miracles doth he even now work ; he burst in 
sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he burst in sunder 
the bondsman's yoke. 

" He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old right ; 
all mankind are one race of noble equals before him. 

" He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cobwebs 
of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for us, which 
day and night have loured on us. 

" A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy 
Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he has put courage 
into their souls. 

*' Their good swords flash, their bright banners wave ; 
what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to look upon 
such gallant knights ? 

" Well, on me, my child, look ! kiss me, and look boldly 
upon me ! one of those knights of the Holy Ghost am I." 

One has only to turn over the pages of his Roinaiicero, — 
a collection of poems written in the first years of his ill- 
ness, with his whole power and charm still in them, and 
not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched by the 
air of his Matrazzen-gruft, his " mattress-grave," — to see 
Heine's width of range ; the most varied figures succeed 
one another, — Rhampsinitus, Edith with the Swan Neck, 
Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine 



HEINRICH HEINE. I35 

I 

of Mahille, Melisanda of Tripoli, Eichard Coeur de Lion, 
Pedro the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr. Dollinger ; — but 
never does Heine attempt to be liuhsch odjectiv^ *' beauti- 
fully objective," to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or 
an old Hebrew, or a Middle- Age knight, or a Spanish ad- 
venturer, or an English royalist ; he always remains Hein- 
rich Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. To give a 
notion of his tone, I will quote a few stanzas at the end of 
the Spcmish AfriclcB, in which he describes, in the char- 
acter of a visitor at the court of Henry of Transtamare at 
Segovia, Henry's treatment of the children of his brother, 
Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego Albuquerque, his neighbor, 
strolls after dinner through the castle with him : 

'' In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels 
where are kept the king's hounds, that with their growl- 
ing and yelping let you know a long way off where they 
are. 

^^ There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong 
iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage. 

^' Two human figures sate therein, two young boys ; 
chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw. 

^' Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other 
not much older ; their faces fair and noble, but pale and 
vv^an with sickness. 

'^ They were all in rags, almost naked ; and their lean 
bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage ; both of 
them shivered with fever. 

" They looked up at me out of the depth of their 
misery ; ' who,' I cried in horror to Don Diego, ' are these 
pictures of wretchedness ? ' 

''Don Diego seemed embarrassed; he looked round to 
see that no one was listening ; then he gave a deep sigh ; 
and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man of the world, 
he said : 

" ' These are a pair of king's sons, who were early left 
orphans ; the name of their father was King Pedro, the 
name of their mother, Maria de Padilla. 

'' 'After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of 



:I36 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the 
tronblesome burden of the crown. 

" ' And likewise of that still more tronblesome burden, 
which is called life, then Don Henry's victorious magna- 
nimity had to deal with his brother's children. 

'* ' He has adopted them, as an uncle should ; and he 
has given them free quarters in his own castle. 

^' ' The room which he has assigned to them is certainly 
rather small, but then it is cool in summer, and not in- 
tolerably cold in winter. 

^* ' Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet as if 
the goddess Ceres had baked it express for her beloved 
Proserpine. 

" *Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to them 
with garbanzos, and then the young gentlemen know that 
it is Sunday in Spain. 

'^ ^ But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do 
not come every day ; and the master of the hounds gives 
them the treat of his whip. 

*' ^ For the master of the hounds, who has under his 
superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the nephews' 
cage also. 

" ' Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced 
woman with the white ruff, whom we remarked to-day at 
dinner. 

" ' And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband 
snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives it to 
the dogs and to the poor little boys. 

*' * But his majesty has expressed his disapproval of 
such proceedings, and has given orders that for the 
future his nephews are to be treated differently from the 
dogs. 

^' ' He has determined no longer to entrust the disciplin- 
ing of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, but to carry 
it out with his own hands.' 

** Don Diego stopped abruptly ; for the seneschal of the 
castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope that we 
had dined to our satisfaction. '^ 

Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finishing 



HEINRICH HEINE. I37 

with the grim innuendo of the last stanza but one, is at 
once truly masterly and truly modern. 

No account of Heine is complete which does not notice 
the Jewish element in him. His race he treated with the 
same freedom with which he treated everything else, but 
he derived a great force from it, and no one knew this 
better than he himself. He has excellently pointed out 
how in the sixteenth century there was a double renas- 
cence, — a Hellenic renascence and a Hebrew renascence, 
— and how both have been great powers ever since. He 
himself had in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit 
of Judaea ; both these spirits reach the infinite, which is 
the true goal of all poetry and all art, — the Greek spirit by 
beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By his perfection 
of literary form, by his love of clearness, by his love of 
beauty, Heifte is Greek ; by his intensity, by his untama- 
bleness, by his ^' longing which cannot be uttered,'' he is 
Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated the things of the 
Hebrews like this ? — 

'^ There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging in 
the Baker's Broad Walk, a man whose name is Moses 
Lump ; all the week he goes about in wind and rain, with 
his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings ; but when 
on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick 
with seven candles lighted, and the table covered with a 
fair white cloth, and he puts away from him his pack 
and his cares, and he sits down to table with his squinting 
wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish with 
them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white gar- 
lic sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King 
David, rejoices with his whole heart over the deliverance 
of the children of Israel out of Egypt, rejoices, too, that 
all the wicked ones who have done the children of Israel 
hurt, have ended by taking themselves off ; that King 
Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and 
all such people, are well dead, while he, Moses Lump, is 
yet alive, and eating fish with wife and daughter ; and I 
can tell you. Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man is 
happy, he has no call to torment himself about culture, he 



138 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

sits contented in his religion and in his green bedgown, 
like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates with satisfaction 
his candles, which he on no account will snuff for himself ; 
and 1 can tell you, if the candles burn a little dim, and 
the snuffers-woman, whose business it is to snuff them, is 
not at hand, and Kothschild the Great were at that mo- 
ment to come in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, 
agents, and chief clerks, with whom he conquers the world, 
and Kothschild were to say : ' Moses Lump, ask of me what 
favor you will, and it shall be granted you ; ' — Doctor, I 
am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly answer : ' Snuff 
me those candles ! ' and Eothschild the Great would exclaim 
with admiration : '^ If I were not Rothschild, I would be 
Moses Lump.'" 

There Heine shows us his own people by its comic side ; 
in the poem of the Princess Sahhath he shows it to us by a 
more serious side. The Princess Sabbath, '^ the tranquil 
Princess, pearl and flower of all beauty, fair as the Queen 
of Sheba, Solomon's bosom friend, that blue stocking from 
Ethiopia, who wanted to shine by her esprit, and with her 
wise riddles made herself in the long run a bore " (with 
Heine the sarcastic turn is never far off), this princess has 
for her betrothed a prince whom sorcery has transformed 
into an animal of lower race, the Prince Israel. 

^'^ A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows all the 
week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers 
of the boys in the street. 

^' But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, sud- 
denly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes once more 
a human being. 

*'A man with the feelings of a man, with head and 
heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb, he 
enters the halls of his Father. 

^' Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father ! Ye tents of 
Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts ! " 

Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful 
poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belonging to '' the 
great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish school 
of poets," a contemporary of the troubadours \— 



HEINRICH HEINE. 139 

" He, too, — the hero whom we sing, — Jehuda ben 
Halevy, too, had his lady-love ; but she was of a special 
sort. 

*^ She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in the 
cathedral on Good Friday kindled that world-renowned 
flame. 

'^ She was no chatelaine, who in the blooming glory of 
her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the yietor's 
crown. 

'' No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady doc- 
trinaire, who delivered her oracles in the judgment-cham- 
ber of a Court of Love. 

*^ She, whom the Eabbi loved, was a woe-begone poor 
darling, a mourning picture of desolation . . . and her 
name was Jerusalem." 

Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and there, amid the ruins, sings 
a song of Sion which has become famous among his peo- 
ple : — 

'' That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed Lament, 
which is sung in all the scattered tents of Jacob through- 
out the world. 

^^On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, 
on the anniversary of Jerusalem's destruction by Titus 
Vespasianus. 

^'Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben 
Halevy sang with his dying breath amid the holy ruins of 
Jerusalem. 

^^ Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there upon 
the fragment of a fallen column ; down to his breast fell, 

" Like a gray forest, his hair ; and cast a weird shadow 
on the face which looked out through it, — his troubled 
pale face, with the spiritual eyes. 

'* So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the fore- 
time to look upon ; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have 
risen out of his grave. 

" But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on his 
barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a naked 
javelin ; 



140 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

•* Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his 
deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow. 

" Quietly flowed the Rabbi's life-blood, quietly he sang 
his song to an end ; and his last dying sigh was Jeru- 
salem ! " 

But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a strange 
poem describing a public dispute, before King Pedro and 
his Court, between a Jewish and a Christian champion, on 
the merits of their respective faiths. In the strain of the 
Jew all the fierceness of the old Hebrew genius, all its 
rigid defiant Monotheism, appear : — 

^^Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb for 
mankind ; he is no gushing philanthropist, no declaimer. 

*^ Our God is not love, caressing is not his line ; but he 
is a God of thunder, and he is a God of revenge. 

'^ The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably every 
sinner, and the sins of the fathers are often visited upon 
their remote posterity. 

'^ Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven he goes 
on existing away, throughout all the eternities. 

" Our God, too is a God in robust health, no myth, pale 
and thin as sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by Cocytus. 

^' Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun, 
moon, and stars ; thrones break, nations reel to and fro, 
when he knits his forehead. 

^•^Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and the 
song of feasting ; but the sound of church-bells he hates, 
as he hates the grunting of pigs.'' 

Nor must Heine's sweetest note be unheard, — his plain- 
tive note, his note of melancholy. Here is a strain which 
came from him as he lay, in the winter night, on his '^ mat- 
tress-grave " at Paris, and let his thoughts wander home to 
Germany, '^ the great child, entertaining herself with her 
Christmas-tree." •''Thou tookest," — he cries to the 
German exile, — 

" Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and happi- 
ness ; naked and poor returnest thou back. German 
truth, German shirts, — one gets them worn to tatters in 
foreign parts. 



HEINRICH HEINE. 141 

*' Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou art 
at home ! one lies warm in German earth, warm as by the 
old pleasant fireside. 

'' Many a one, alas, became crippled, and could get home 
no more ! longingly he stretches out his arms ; God have 
mercy upon him ! " 

God have mercy upon him ! for what remain of the 
days of the years of his life are few and evil. " Can it be 
that I still actually exist ? My body is so shrunk that 
there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my 
bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the 
enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in 
Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green 
flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother 
Merlin, and their fresh waving ! for over my mattress-grave 
here in Paris no green leaves rustle ; and early and late I 
hear nothing but the rattle of carriages, hammering, scold- 
ing, and the jingle of the piano. A grave without rest, 
death without the privileges of the departed, who have no 
longer any need to spend money, or to write letters, or to 
compose books. What a melancholy situation ! " 

He died, and has left a blemished name ; with his crying 
faults, — his intemperate susceptibility, his unscrupulous- 
ness in passion, his inconceivable attacks on his enemies, 
his still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, his want 
of generosity, his sensuality, his incessant mocking, — how 
could it be otherwise ? Not only was he not one of Mr. 
Carlyle^s *^ respectable " people, he was profoundly disre- 
spectable ; and not even the merit of not being a Philistine 
can make up for a man^s being that. To his intellectual 
deliverance there was an addition of something else want- 
ing, and that something else was something immense ; the 
old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliver- 
ance. Goethe says that he was deficient in love ; to me his 
weakness seems to be not so much a deficiency in love as a 
deficiency in self-respect, in true dignity of character. 
But on this negative side of one's criticism of a man of 
great genius, I for my part, when I have once clearly 
marked that this negative side is and must be there, have 



142 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine some- 
thing positive. He is not an adequate interpreter of the 
modern world. He is only a brilliant soldier in the 
Liberation War of humanity. But, such as he is, he is 
(and posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the 
European poetry of that quarter of a century which follows 
the death of Goethe, incomparably the most important 
figure. 

What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is Nature ! 
With what prodigality, in the march of generations, she 
employs human power, content to gather almost always 
little result from it, sometimes none ! Look at Byron, 
that Byron whom the present generation of Englishmen 
are forgetting ; Byron, the greatest natural force, the 
greatest elementary power, I cannot but think which has 
appeared in our literature since Shakespeare. And what 
became of this wonderful production of nature ? He 
shattered himself, he inevitably shattered himself to pieces 
against the huge, black, cloud-topped, interminable prec- 
ipice of British Philistinism. But Byron, it may be said, 
was eminent only by his genius, only by his inborn force 
and fire ; he had not the intellectual equipment of a su- 
preme modern poet ; except for his genins he was an 
ordinary nineteenth-century English gentleman, with 
little culture and with no ideas. Well, then, look at 
Heine. Heine had all the culture of Germany ; in his head 
fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. And what 
have we got from Heine ? A half -result, for want of 
moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and character. 
That is what I say ; there is so much power, so many seem 
able to run well, so many give promise of running well ; — so 
few reach the goal, so few are chosen. Many are called, 
few cJiosen. 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTI- 

MENT. 

I READ the other day in the DuUin Revieio : — ^' We 
Catholics are apt to be cowed and scared by the lordly op- 
pression of pu]3lic opinion, and not to bear ourselves as 
men in the face of the anti-Catholic society of England. 
It is good to have an habitual conscionsness that the public 
opinion of Catholic Europe looks upon Protestant England 
with a mixture of impatience and compassion, which more 
than balances the arrogance of the English people towards 
the Catholic Church in these countries." 

The Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Eoman, can 
take very good care of herself, and I am not going to de- 
fend her against the scorn of Exeter Hall. Catholicism is 
not a great visible force in this country, and the mass of 
mankind will always treat lightly even things the most 
venerable, if they do not present themselves as visible 
forces before its eyes. In Catholic countries, as the Dublin 
Revieio itself says with triumph, they make very little ac- 
count of the greatness of Exeter Hall. The majority has 
eyes only for the things of the majority, and in England 
the immense majority is Protestant. And yet, in spite of 
all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic, like the 
writer in the DuMin Revieio, has in this Protestant coun- 
try inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous 
insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so 
general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console 
him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his relig- 
ion may he see if he has his eyes open ! I will tell him of 
one of them. Let him go in London to that delightful 
spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room 



144 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, 
the region where its theological books are placed. I am 
almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. 
Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the 
library to the flames. He will find an immense Catholic 
work, the collection of the Abbe Migne, lording it over 
that whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble 
Protestant forces which hang upon its skirts. Protestant- 
ism is duly represented, indeed : the librarian knows his 
business too well to suffer it to be otherwise ; all the varie- 
ties of Protestantism are there ; there is the Library of 
Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, 
but a little uninteresting ; there are the works of Calvin, 
rigid, militant, menacing ; there are the works of Dr. 
Chalmers, the Scotch thistle valiantly doing duty as the 
rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about 
it all the time ; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the 
last word of religious philosophy in a land where every one 
has some culture, and where superiorities are discounte- 
nanced, — the flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity. 
But how are all these divided against one another, and 
how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by 
the Catholic Leviathan, their neighbor ! Majestic in its 
blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and com- 
partment after compartment, its right mounting up into 
heaven among the white folios of the Acta Sanctorum, its 
left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of 
the Laio Digest. Everything is there, in that immense 
PatrologioR Cursus Completus, in that E^icy dope die Theo- 
logique, that Nouvelle Encyclopedie Tlieologique, that 
Troisieyne Encyclopedie Tlieologique ; religion, philosophy, 
history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. 
The work embraces the whole range of human interests ; 
like one of the great Middle- Age Cathedrals, it is in itself 
a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags 
everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, 
sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of human 
concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it 
is ! a power, for history at any rate, eminently tlic Church; 



PAGAN AND MEDLEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 145 

not, j^erhaps, the Church of the future, but indisputably 
the Church of the past and, in the past, the Church of 
the multitude. 

This is why the man of imagination — nay, and the phi- 
losopher too, in spite of her propensity to burn him — will 
always have a weakness for the Catholic Church ; because 
of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored 
within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, 
or of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought 
of men of a definite type as their adherents ; the mention 
of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Angli- 
canism suggests the English episcopate ; Calvin's name 
suggests Dr. Candlish ; Chalmers^'s, the Duke of Argyll ; 
Channing's, Boston society ; but Catholicism suggests, — 
what shall I say ? — all the pell-mell of the men and women 
of Shakespeare's plays. This abundance the Abbe Migne's 
collection faithfully reflects. People talk of this or that 
work which they would choose, if they were to pass their 
life with only one ; for my parti think I would choose the 
Abbe Migne's collection. Quicquid agunt homines, — 
everything, as I have said, is there. Do not seek in it 
splendor of form, perfection of editing ; its paper is com- 
mon, its type ugly, its editing indifferent, its printing care- 
less. The greatest and most baffling crowd of misprints I 
ever met in my life occurs in a very important page of the 
introduction to the Dictioiinaire des Apocryplies. But 
this is just what you have in the world, — quantity rather 
than quality. Do not seek in it impartiality, the critical 
spirit ; in reading it you must do the criticism for your- 
self ; it loves criticism as little as the world loves it. Like 
the world, it chooses to have things all its own way, to 
abuse its adversary, to back its own notion through thick 
and thin, to put forward all the^;ro5for its own notion, to 
suppress all the contras ; it does just all that the world 
does, and all that the critical shrinks from. Open the 
Dictionnaire des Erreurs Sociales : ^^The religious perse- 
cutions of Henry the Eighth's and Edward the Sixth's 
time abated a little in the reign of Mary, to break out 
again with new fury in the reign of Elizabeth." There is 



146 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

a summary of the history of religious persecution under 
the Tudors ! But how unreasonable to reproach the Abbe 
Migne's work with wanting a criticism, which, by the very 
nature of things, it cannot have, and not rather to be 
gratef nl to it for its abundance, its variety, its infinite sug- 
gestiveness, its happy adoption, in many a delicate cir- 
cumstance, of the urbane tone and temper of the man of 
the world, instead of the acrid tone and temper of the 
fanatic ! 

Still, in spite of their fascinations, the contents of this 
collection sometimes rouse the critical spirit within one. 
It happened that lately, after I had been thinking much of 
Marcus Aurelius and his times, I took down the Diction- 
naire des Origines dio Christianisme, to see what it had 
to say about paganism and pagans. I found much what I 
expected. I read the article. Revelation iJvangelique, sa 
Necessite. There I found what a sink of iniquity was the 
whole pagan world ; how one Roman fed his oysters on his 
slaves, how another put a slave to death that a curious 
friend might see what dying was like ; how Galen's 
mother tore and bit her waiting- women when she was in a 
passion with them. I found this account of the religion 
of paganism : '^ Paganism invented a mob of divinities 
with the most hateful character, and attributed to them 
the most monstrous and abominable crimes. It personified 
in them drunkenness, incest, kidnapping, adultery, sen- 
suality, knavery, cruelty, and rage." And I found that 
from this religion there followed such practice as was to 
be expected : '' What must naturally have been the state 
of morals under the influence of such a religion, which 
penetrated with its own spirit the public life, the family 
life, and the individual life of antiquity ? " 

The colors in this picture are laid on very thick, and I 
for my part cannot believe that any human societies, with 
a religion and practice such as those just described, could 
ever have endured as the societies of Greece and Rome 
endured, still less have done what the societies of Greece and 
Rome did. We are not brought far by descriptions of the 
vices of great cities, or even of individuals driven mad by 



PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. I47 

unbounded means of self-indulgence. Feudal and aristo- 
cratic life in Christendom has produced horrors of selfish- 
ness and cruelty not surpassed by the grandee of pagan 
Rome ; and then, again, in antiquity there is Marcus 
Aurelius's mother to set against Galen's. Eminent ex- 
amples of vice and virtue in individuals prove little as to 
the state of societies. What, under the first emperors, 
was the condition of the Roman poor upon the Aventine 
compared with that of our poor in Sj^italfields and Bethnal 
Green ? AYhat, in comfort, morals, and happiness, were 
the rural population of the Sabine country under Augustus's 
rule, compared with the rural population of Hertfordshire 
and Buckinghamshire under the rule of Queen Victoria ? 

But these great questions are not now for me. Without 
trying to answer them, I ask myself, when I read such 
declamation as the foregoing, if I can find anything that 
will give me a near, distinct sense of the real difference in 
spirit and sentiment between paganism and Christianity, 
and of the natural effect of this difference upon people in 
general. I take a representative religions poem of pagan- 
ism, — of the paganism which all the world has in its mind 
when it speaks of paganism. To be a representative poem, 
it must be one for popular use, one that the multitude 
listens to. Such a religious poem may be at the end of one 
of the best and happiest of Theocritus's idylls, the fifteenth. 
In order that the reader may the better go along with me 
in the line of thought I am following, I will translate it ; 
and, that he may see the medium in which religious poetry 
of this sort is found existing, the society out of which it 
grows, the people who form it and are formed by it, I will 
translate the whole, or nearly the whole, of the idyll (it is 
not long) in which the poem occurs. 

The idyll is dramatic. Somewhere about two hundred 
and eighty years before the Christian era, a couple of 
Syracusan women, staying at Alexandria, agreed on the 
occasion of a great religious solemnity, — the feast of 
Adonis, — to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the 
queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with 



148 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, 
was to be recited over the image. The names of the two 
women are Gorgo and Praxinoe ; their maids, who are 
mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. 
Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch 
her, and there the dialogue begins : — 

Gorgo, — Is Praxinoe at home ? 

Praxinoe. — My dear Gorgo, at last ! Yes, here I am. 
Eunoe, find a chair, — get a cushion for it. 

Gorgo. — It will do beautifully as it is. 

Praxinoe. — Do sit down. 

Gorgo. — Oh, this gad-about spirit ! I could hardly get 
to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and all the 
carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in 
uniform. And what a journey it is ! My dear child, you 
really live too far off. 

Praxinoe. — It is all that insane husband of mine. He 
has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and 
take a hole of a place, — for a house it is not, — on purpose 
that you and I might not be neighbors. He is always just 
the same ; anything to quarrel with one ! anything for 
spite ! 

Gorgo. — My dear, don't talk so of your husband before 
the little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. 
Never mind, Zopyrio, my pet, she is not talking about 
papa. 

Praxiiioe. — Good heavens ! the child does really under- 
stand. 

Gorgo. — Pretty papa ! 

Praxiyioe. — That pretty papa of his the other day 
(though I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), 
when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and rouge, brought 
me home salt instead ; — stupid, great, big, interminable 
animal ! 

Gorgo. — Mine is just the fellow to him . . . But never 
mind now, get on your things and let us be off to the 
palace to see the Adonis. I hear the Queen's decorations 
are something splendid. 

Praxinoe, — In grand people's houses everything is grand. 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. I49 

What things you have seen in Alexandria ! What a deal 
you will have to tell to anybody who has never been here ! 

Gorgo. — Come, we ought to be going. 

Praxinoe. — Every day is holiday to people who have 
nothing to do. Eunoe, pick up your work ; and take care, 
lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again ; the cats find 
it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch me 
some water, quick ! I wanted the water first, and the girl 
brings me the soap. Never mind ; give it me. j^ot all 
that, extravagant ! Now pour out the water ; — stupid ! 
why don't you take care of my dress ? That will do. I 
have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where is 
the key of the large wardrobe ? Bring it here ; — quick ! 

Gorgo. — Praxinoe, you can't think how well that dress, 
made full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how 
much did it cost ? — the dress by itself, I mean. 

Praxmoe. — Don't talk of it, Gorgo : more than eight 
guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it 
I have almost worn my life out. 

Gorgo. — Well, you couldn't have done better. 

Praxinoe. — Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put 
my hat properly on my head ; — properly. No, child (to 
her little hoy), I am not going to take you ; there's a bogy 
on horseback, who bites. Cry as much as you like ; I'm 
not going to have you lamed for life. Now we'll start. 
Nurse, take the little one and amuse him ; call the dog 
in, and shut the street-door. {Tliey go out.) Good 
heavens ! what a crowd of people ! How on earth are we 
ever to get through all this ? They are like ants : you 
can't count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become 
of us ? here are the royal Horse Guards. My good man, 
don't ride over me ! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt 
upright ; what a vicious one ! Eunoe, you mad girl, do 
take care ! — that horse will certainly be the death of the 
man on his back. How glad I am now, that I left the 
child safe at home ! 

Gorgo. — All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them ; 
and they have gone on to where they are stationed. 

Praxinoe — Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From 



150 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of 
horses and snakes than of anything in the world. Let us 
get on ; here's a great crowd coming this way upon us. 

Gorgo (to an old looman). — Mother, are you from the 
palace ? 

Old Woman. — Yes, my dears. 

Gorgo. — Has one a tolerable chance of getting there ? 

Old Woman. — My pretty young lady, the Greeks got 
to Troy by dint of trying hard ; trying will do anything 
in this world. 

Gorgo. — The old creature has delivered herself of an 
oracle and departed. 

Praxinoe. — Women can tell you everything about every- 
thing, Jupiter's marriage with Juno not excepted. 

Gorgo. — Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace 
gates ! 

Praxinoe. — Tremendous ! Take hold of me. Gorgo ; 
and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis ! — tight hold, or 
you'll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight to 
us, Eunoe ! Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! Gorgo, there's my 
scarf torn right in two. For heaven's sake, my good man, 
as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress ! 

Stranger. — I'll do what I can, but it doesn't depend 
upon me. 

Praxinoe. — What heaps of people ! They push like a 
drove of pigs. 

Stranger. — Don't be frightened, ma'am, we are all 
right. 

Praxinoe. — May you be all right, my dear sir, to the 
last day you live, for the care you have taken of us ! 
What a kind, considerate man ! There is Eunoe jammed 
in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push ! Capital ! We are 
all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom 
said when he had locked himself in with the bride. 

Gorgo. — Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at 
that work, how delicate it is ! — how exquisite ! Why, 
they might wear it in heaven. 

Praxinoe. — Heavenly patroness of needlewomen, what 
hands were hired to do that work ? AVho designed those 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 151 

beautiful patterns ? They seem to stand up and move 
about, as if they were real ; — as if they were living things, 
and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature ! 
And look, look, how charming he lies there on his silver 
couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, that beloved 
Adonis, — Adonis, whom one loves even though he is 
dead ! 

Aiiother Stranger. — You wretched women, do stop your 
incessant chatter ! Like turtles, you go on forever. They 
are enough to kill one with their broad lingo — nothing 
but «, a, a. 

Gorgo. — Lord, where does the man come from ? What 
is it to you if we are chatterboxes ? Order about your 
own servants ! Do you give orders to Syracusan women ? 
If you want to know, we came originally from Corinth, as 
Bellerophon did ; we speak Peloponnesian. I suppose 
Dorian women may be allowed to have a Dorian accent. 

Praxinoe. — Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no 
more masters than the one we've got ! We don't the least 
care for you ; pray don't trouble yourself for nothing. 

Gorgo. — Be quiet, Praxinoe ! That first-rate singer, 
the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis 
hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge 
last year. We are sure to have something first-rate from 
her. She is going through her airs and graces ready to 
begin. — 

So far the dialogue ; and, as it stands in the original, it 
can hardly be praised too highly. It is a page torn fresh 
out of the book of human life. What freedom ! What 
animation ! What gaiety ! What naturalness ! It is 
said that Theocritus, in composing this poem, borrowed 
from a work of Sophron, a poet of an earlier and better 
time ; but, even if this is so, the form is still Theocritus's 
own, and how excellent is that form, how masterly ! ilnd 
this in a Greek poem of the decadence ! — for Theocritus's 
poetry, after all, is poetry of the decadence. When such 
is Greek poetry of the decadence, what must be Greek 
poetry of the prime ? 

Then the singer begins her hymn : — 



152 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

'^ Mistress, who lovetli the haunts of Golgi, and Idalium, 
and high-peaked Eijx, Aphrodite that playest with gold ! 
how have the deUcate-footed Hours, after twelve months, 
brought thy Adonis back to thee from the ever-flowing 
Acheron ! Tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours, 
but all mankind wait their approach with longing, for 
they ever bring something with them. Oypris, Dione's 
child ! thou didst change — so is the story among men — 
Berenice from mortal to immortal, by dropping ambrosia 
into her fair bosom ; and in gratitude to thee for this, 
thou of many names and many temples ! Berenice's 
daughter, Arsinoe, lovely Helen's living counterpart, makes 
much of Adonis with all manner of braveries. 

'* All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, all 
treasures of the garden in silver baskets, and alabaster 
boxes, gold-inlaid, of Syrian ointment ; and all confec- 
tionery that cunning women make on their kneading- tray, 
kneading up every sort of flowers with white meal, and 
all that they make of sweet honey and delicate oil, and all 
winged and creeping things are here set before him. And 
there are built for him green bowers with wealth of ten- 
der anise, and little boy-loves flutter about over them, like 
young nightingales trying their new wings on the tree, 
from bough to bough. Oh, the ebony, the gold, the eagle 
of white ivory that bears aloft his cup-bearer to Cronos- 
born Zeus ! And up there, see ! a second couch strewn 
for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer than sleep itself 
(so Miletus and the Samian wool-grower will say) ; Cypris 
has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis has his, that eighteen 
or nineteen-year-old bridegroom. His kisses will not 
wound, the hair on his lip is yet light. 

'* Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy bride- 
groom ; but to-morrow morning, with the earliest dew, 
we will one and all bear him forth to where the waves 
splash upon the sea-strand, and letting loose our locks, 
and letting fall our robes, with bosoms bare, we will set 
up this, our melodious strain : 

'* * Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men say) 
thou art permitted to visit both us and Acheron ! This 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 153 

lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the mighty moon-struck 
hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba's twenty 
children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus who came home from 
Troy, nor those yet earlier Lapithse and the sons of Deu- 
calion, nor the Pelasgians, the root of Argos and of Pelop's 
isle. Be gracious to us now, loved Adonis, and be favor- 
able to us for the year to come ! Dear to us hast thou 
been at this coming, dear to us shalt thou be when thou 
comest again.' " 

The poem concludes with a characteristic speech from 
Gorgo : — 

^^ Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. 
That lucky woman to know all that ! and luckier still to 
have such a splendid voice ! And now we must see about 
getting home. My husband has not had his dinner. That 
man is all vinegar, and nothing else ; and if you keep him 
waiting for his dinner, he's dangerous to go near. Adieu, 
precious Adonis, and may you find us all well when you 
come next year ! " 

So, with the hymn still in her ears, says the incorrigible 
Gorgo. 

But what a hymn that is ! Of religious emotion, in our 
acceptation of the words, and of the comfort springing 
from religious emotion, not a particle. And yet many 
elements of religious emotion are contained in the beautiful 
story of Adonis. Symbolically treated, as the thoughtful 
man might treat it, as the Greek mysteries undoubtedly 
treated it, this story was capable of a noble and touching 
application, and could lead the soul to elevating and con- 
soling thoughts. Adonis was the sun in his summer and 
in his winter course, in his time of triumph and his time 
of defeat ; but in his time of triumph still moving towards 
his defeat, in his time of defeat still returning towards his 
triumph. Thus he became an emblem of the power of life 
and the bloom of beauty, the power of human life and 
the bloom of human beauty, hastening inevitably to dimi- 
nution and decay, yet in that very decay finding 

** Hope, and a renovation without end.'* 



154 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

But nothing of this appears in the story as prepared for 
popular religious use, as presented to the multitude in a 
popular religious ceremony. Its treatment is not devoid 
of a certain grace and beauty, but it has nothing whatever 
that is elevating, nothing that is consoling, nothing that 
is in our sense of the word religious. The religious cere- 
monies of Christendom, even on occasion of the most joy- 
ful and mundane matters, present the multitude with 
strains of profoundly religious character, such as the Kyrie 
eleison and the Te Deum. But this Greek hymn to Adonis 
adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper of a gay and 
pleasure-loving multitude, — of light-hearted people, like 
Gorgo and Praxinoe, whose moral nature is much of the 
same caliber as that of Phillina in Goethe's Wilhelm 
Meister, people who seem never made to be serious, never 
made to be sick or sorry. And, if they happen to be 
sick or sorry, what will they do then ? But that we have 
no right to ask. Phillina, within the enchanted bounds 
of Goethe's novel, Gorgo and Praxinoe, within the en- 
chanted bounds of Theocritus's poem, never will be sick 
and sorry, never can be sick and sorry. The ideal, cheer- 
ful, sensuous, pagan life is not sick or sorry. No ; yet 
its natural end is in the sort of life which Pompeii 
and Herculaneum bring so vividly before us, — a life which 
by no means in itself suggests the thought of horror and 
misery, which even, in many ways, gratifies the senses and 
the understanding ; but by the very intensity and unre- 
mittingness of its appeal to the senses and the understand- 
ing, by its stimulating a single side of us too absolutely, 
ends by fatiguing and revolting us ; ends by leaving us 
with a sense of confinement, of oppression, — with a desire 
for an utter change, for clouds, storms, effusion, and re- 
lief. 

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the 
clouds and storms had come, when the gay sensuous pagan 
life was gone, when men were not living by the senses and 
understanding, when they were looking for the speedy 
coming of Antichrist, there appeared in Italy, to the north 
of Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian country at the foot of 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 155 

the Apennines, a figure of the most magical power and 
charm, St. Francis. His century is, I think, the most 
interesting in the history of Christianity after its primitive 
age, more interesting than even the century of the Refor- 
mation ; and one of the chief figures, perhaps the very 
chief, to which this interest attaches itself, is St. Francis. 
And why ? Because of the profound popular instinct 
which enabled him, more than any man since the primitive 
age, to fit religion for popular use. He brought religion 
to the people. He founded the most popular body of 
ministers of religion that has ever existed in the Church. 
He transformed monachism by uprooting the stationary 
monk, delivering him from the bondage of property, and 
sending him, as a mendicant friar, to be a stranger and 
sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most crowded 
haunts of men, to console them and to do them good. 
This popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his famous 
marriage with poverty. Poverty and suffering are the 
condition of the people, the multitude, the immense 
majority of mankind ; and it was towards this people that 
his soul yearned. ^^ He listens," it was said of him, " to 
those to whom God himself will not listen." 

So in return, as no other man he was listened to. 
When an Umbrian town or village heard of his approach, 
the whole population went out in joyful procession to 
meet him, with green boughs, flags, music, and songs of 
gladness. The master, who began with two disciples, 
could in his own lifetime (and he died at forty -four) collect 
to keep Whitsuntide with him, in presence of an immense 
multitude, five thousand of his Minorites. And thus he 
found fulfilment to his prophetic cry : '^ I hear in my ears 
the sound of the tongues of all the nations who shall come 
unto us ; Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen. 
The Lord will make of us a great people, even unto the 
ends of the earth."" 

Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made 
poetry. Latin was too learned for this simple, popular 
nature, and he composed in his mother tongue, in Italian. 
The beginnings of the mundane poetry of the Italians are 



156 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

in Sicily, at the court of kings ; tlie beginnings of their 
religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are 
the humble upper waters of a mighty stream ; at the 
beginning of the thirteenth century it is St. Francis, at 
the end, Dante. Now it happens that St. Francis, too, 
like the Alexandrian songstress, has his hymn for the sun, 
for Adonis. Canticle of the Sun, Canticle of the Creatures, 
— the poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian 
hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use by 
King Ptolemy's people ; artless in language, irregular in 
rhythm, it matches with the childlike genius that produced 
it, and the simple natures that loved and repeated it : — 

^' most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong 
praise, glory, honor, and all blessing ! 

" Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures ; and 
specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day, 
and who brings us the light ; fair is he, and shining 
with a very great splendor : Lord, he signifies to us 
thee ! 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for 
the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for 
air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the which thou 
upholdest in life all creatures. 

'^ Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very 
serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, and clean. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom 
thou givest us light in the darkness ; and he is bright, and 
pleasant, and very mighty, and strong. 

" Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the 
which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth 
divers fruits, and flowers of many colors, and grass. 

^' Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one 
another for his love's sake, and who endure weakness and 
tribulation ; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, 
for thou, most Highest, shalt give them a crown ! 

*^ Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the 
body, from whom no man escapeth. Woe to him who 
dieth in mortal sin ! Blessed are they who are found 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 157 

walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall 
have no power to do them harm. 

^' Praise ye, and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks 
unto him, and serve him with great humility." 

It is natural that man should take pleasure in his senses. 
But it is natural, also, that he should take refuge in his 
heart and imagination from his misery. And when one 
thinks what human life is for the vast majority of mankind, 
how little of a feast for their senses it can possibly be, one 
understands the charm for them of a refuge offered in the 
heart and imagination. Above all, when one thinks what 
human life was in the Middle Ages, one understands the 
charm of such a refuge. 

Now, the poetry of Theocritus's hymn is poetry treating 
the world according to the demand of the senses ; the 
poetry of St. Francis's hymn is poetry treating the world 
according to the demand of the heart and imagination. 
The first takes the world by its outward, sensible side ; 
the second by its inward, symbolical side. The first admits 
as much of the world as is pleasure-giving ; the second 
admits the whole world, rough and smooth, painful and 
pleasure-giving, all alike, but all transfigured by the power 
of a spiritual emotion, all brought under a law of super- 
sensual love, having its seat in the soul. It can thus even 
say : *^ Praised be my Lord for our sister , the death of the 
body:' 

But these very words are, perhaps, an indication that we 
are touching upon an extreme. When we see Pompeii, 
we can put our finger upon the pagan sentiment in its 
extreme. And when we read of Monte Alverno and the 
stigynata ; when we read of the repulsive, because self- 
caused, sufferings of the end of St. Francis's life ; when 
we find him even saying, '* I have sinned against my 
brother the ass," meaning by these words that he had been 
too hard upon his own body ; when we find him assailed, 
even himself, by the doubt *' whether he who had destroyed 
himself by the severity of his penances could find mercy 
in eternity," we can put our finger on the mediasval 
Christian sentiment in its extreme. Human nature is 



158 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

neither all senses and understanding, nor all heart and 
imagination. Pompeii was a sign that for humanity at 
large the measure of sensualism had been overpassed ; St. 
Francis's doubt was a sign that for humanity at large the 
measure of spiritualism had been overpassed. Humanity, 
in its violent rebound from one extreme, had swung from 
Pompeii to Monte Alverno ; but it was sure not to stay 
there. 

The Eenascence is, in part, a return towards the pagan 
spirit, in the special sense in which I have been using the 
word pagan ; a return towards the life of the senses and 
the understanding. The Reformation, on the other hand, 
is the very opposite to this ; in Luther there is nothing 
Greek or pagan ; vehemently as he attacked the adoration of 
St. Francis, Luther had himself something of St. Francis 
in him ; he was a thousand times more akin to St. Francis 
than to Theocritus or to Voltaire. The Reformation — I 
do not mean the inferior piece given under that name, by 
Henry the Eighth and a second-rate company, in this 
island, but the real Reformation, the German Reformation, 
Luther's Reformation — was a reaction of the moral and 
spiritual sense against the carnal and pagan sense ; it was 
a religious revival like St. Francis's, but this time against 
the Church of Rome, not within her ; for the carnal and 
pagan sense had now, in the government of the Church 
of Rome herself, its prime representative. But the grand 
reaction against the rule of the heart and imagination, the 
strong return towards the rule of the senses and under- 
standing, is in the eighteenth century. And this reaction 
has had no more brilliant champion than a man of the 
nineteenth, of whom I have already spoken ; a man who 
could feel not only the pleasurableness but the poetry of 
the life of the senses (and the life of the senses has its 
deep poetry) ; a man who, in his very last poem, divided 
the whole world into '' barbarians and Greeks," — Heinrich 
Heine. No man has reproached the Monte Alverno 
extreme in sentiment, the Christian extreme, the heart 
and imagination subjugating the senses and under- 
standing, more bitterly than Heine ; no man has 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 159 

extolled the Pompeii extreme, the pagan extreme, more 
rapturously. 

^'^All through the Middle Age these sufferings, this 
fever, this over-tension lasted ; and we moderns still feel 
in all our limbs the pain and weakness from them. Even 
those of us who are cured have still to live with a hospital 
atmosphere all around us, and find ourselves as wretched 
in it as a strong man among the sick. Some day or other, 
when humanity shall have got quite well again, when the 
body and soul shall have made their peace together, the 
fictitious quarrel which Christianity has cooked up between 
them will appear something hardly comprehensible. The 
fairer and happier generations, offspring of unfettered 
unions, that will rise up and bloom in the atmosphere of 
a religion of pleasure, will smile sadly when they think of 
their poor ancestors, whose life was passed in melancholy 
abstinence from the joys of this beautiful earth, and who 
faded away into specters, from the mortal compression 
which they put upon the warm and glowing emotions of 
sense. Yes, with assurance, I say it, our descendants will 
be fairer and happier than we are ; for I am a believer in 
progress, and I hold God to be a kind being who has 
intended man to be happy." 

That is Heine's sentiment, in the prime of life, in the 
glow of activity, amid the brilliant whirl of Paris. I will 
no more blame it than I blamed the sentiment of the 
Greek hymn to Adonis. I wish to decide nothing as of 
my own authority ; the great art of criticism is to get 
oneself out of the way and to let humanity decide. Well, 
the sentiment of the '^ religion of pleasure " has much 
that is natural in it ; humanity will gladly accept it if it 
can live by it ; to live by it one must never be sick or 
sorry, and the old, ideal, limited, pagan world never, I 
have said, was sick or sorry, never at least shows itself 
to us sick or sorry : — 

" What pipes and timbrels ! What wild ecstasy ! " 

For our imagination, Gorgo and Praxinoe cross the 



leO ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

human stage chattering in their blithe Doric, — lilce turtles, 
as the cross stranger said, — and keep gailj chattering on 
till they disappear. But in the new, real, immense, post- 
pagan world, — in the barbarian world, — the shock of 
accident is unceasing, the serenity of existence is per- 
petually troubled, not even a Greek like Heine can get 
across the mortal stage without bitter calamity. How 
does the sentiment of the ^^ religion of pleasure" serve 
then ? does it help, does it console ? Can a man live by 
it ? Heine again shall answer ; Heine just twenty years 
older, stricken with incurable disease, waiting for death: — 

*^ The great pot stands smoking before me, but I have 
no spoon to help myself. What does it profit me that my 
health is drunk at banquets out of gold cups and in most 
exquisite wines, if I myself, while these ovations are goiug 
on, lonely and cut off from the pleasures of the world, 
can only just wet my lips with barley-water ? What good 
does it do me that all the roses of Shiraz open their leaves 
and burn for me with passionate tenderness ? Alas ! 
Shiraz is some two thousand leagues from the Eue d' Am- 
sterdam, where in the solitude of my sick chamber all the 
perfume I smell is that of hot towels. Alas ! the mockery 
of God is heavy upon me ! The great author of the 
universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, has determined to 
make the petty earthly author, the so-called Aristophanes 
of Germany, feel to his heart's core what pitiful needle- 
pricks his cleverest sarcasms have been, compared with 
the thunderbolts which his divine humor can launch 
against feeble mortals ! . . . 

" In the year 1340, says the Chronicle of Limburg, all 
over Germany everybody was strumming and liumming 
certain songs more lovely and delightful than any which 
had ever yet been known in German countries ; and all 
people, old and young, the women particularly, were 
perfectly mad about them, so that from morning till night 
you heard nothing else. Only the Chronicle adds, the 
author of these songs happened to be a young clerk, 
afflicted with leprosy, and living apart from all the world 
in a desolate place. The excellent reader does not require 



PAGAN AND MEDI^^VAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 101 

to be told how horrible a complaint was leprosy in the 
Mid(^ Ages, and how the poor wretches who had this 
incnnlble plague were banished from society, and had to 
keep at a distance from every human being. Like living 
corpses, in a gray gown reaching down to the feet, and 
with the hood brought over their face, they went about, 
carrying in their hands an enormous rattle, called Saint 
Lazarus^s rattle. With this rattle they gave notice of 
their approach, that every one might have time to get out 
of their way. This poor clerk, then, whose poetical gift 
the Limburg Chronicle extols, was a leper, and he sate 
moping in the dismal deserts of his misery, whilst all 
Germany, gay and tuneful, w^as praising his songs. 

^' Sometimes, in my somber visions of the night, I 
imagine that I see before me the poor leprosy-stricken 
clerk of the Limburg Chronicle, and then from under his 
gray hood his distressed eyes look out upon me in a fixed 
and strange fashion ; but the next instant he disappears, 
and I hear dying away in the distance, like the echo of a 
dream, the dull creak of Saint Lazarus^s rattle." 

We have come a long way from Theocritus there ? the 
expression of that has nothing of the clear, positive, happy, 
pagan character ; it has much more the character of one 
of the indeterminate grotesques of the sufferiiig Middle 
Age. Profoundness and power it has, though at the same 
time it is not truly poetical ; it is not natural enough for 
that, there is too much waywardness in it, too much bra- 
vado. But as a condition of sentiment to be popular, — 
to be a comfort for the mass of mankind, under the pres- 
sure of calamity, to live by, — what a manifest failure is 
this last word of the religion of pleasure ! One man in 
many millions, a Heine, may console himself, and keep 
himself erect in suffering, by a colossal irony of this sort, 
by covering himself and the universe with the red fire of 
this sinister mockery ; but the many millions cannot, — 
cannot if they would. That is where the sentiment of a 
religion of sorrow has such a vast advantage over the sen- 
timent of a religion of pleasure ; in its power to be a 
general, popular, religious sentiment, a stay for the mass 



1G2 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of mankind, whose lives are full of hardship. It really 
succeeds in conveying far more joy, far more of what the 
mass of mankind are so much without, than its rival. I 
do not mean joy in prospect only, but joy in possession, 
actual enjoyment of the world. Mediaeval Christianity is 
reproached with its gloom and austerities ; it assigns the 
material world, says Heine, to the devil. But yet what a 
fulness of delight does St. Francis manage to draw from 
this material world itself, and from its commonest and 
most universally enjoyed elements, — sun, air, earth, water, 
plants ! His hymn expresses a far more cordial sense of 
happiness, even in the material world, than the hymn of 
Theocritus. It is this which made the fortune of Chris- 
tianity, — its gladness, not its sorrow ; not its assigning the 
spiritual world to Christ, and the material world to the 
devil, but its drawing from the spiritual world a source of 
joy so abundant that it ran over upon the material world 
and transfigured it. 

I have said a great deal of harm of paganism ; and, 
taking paganism to mean a state of things which it is 
commonly taken to mean, and which did really exist, no 
more harm than it well deserved. Yet I must not end 
without reminding the reader, that before this state of 
things appeared, there was an epoch in Greek life, — in 
pagan life, — of the highest possible beauty and value. 
That epoch by itself goes far towards making Greece the 
Greece we mean when we speak of Greece, — a country 
hardly less important to mankind than Judaea. The 
poetry of later paganism lived by the senses and under- 
standing ; the poetry of mediaeval Christianity lived by 
the heart and imagination. But the main element of the 
modern spirit's life is neither the senses and under- 
standing, nor the heart and imagination ; it is the imagi- 
native reason. And there is a century in Greek life, — the 
century preceding the Peloponnesian war, from about the 
year 530 to the year 430 b. c, — in which poetry made, it 
seems to me, the noblest, the most successful effort she 
has ever made as the priestess of the imaginative reason, 
of the element by which the modern spirit, if it would 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 163 

live right, has chiefly to live. Of this effort, of which the 
four great names are Simonides, Pindar, ^schylus, Soph- 
ocles, I must not now attempt more than the bare mention ; 
but it is right, it is necessary, after all I have said, to 
indicate it. No doubt that effort was imperfect. Per- 
haps everything, take it at what point in its existence 
you will, carries within itself the fatal law of its own 
ulterior development. Perhaps, even of the life of Pin- 
dar's time, Pompeii was the inevitable bourne. Perhajjs 
the life of their beautiful Greece could not afford to its 
poets all that fulness of varied experience, all that power 
of emotion, which 

* . . . the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 

affords the poet of after-times. Perhaps in Sophocles the 
thinking-power a little overbalances the religious sense, as 
in Dante the religious sense overbalances the thinking- 
power. The present has to make its own poetry, and not 
even Sophocles and his compeers, any more than Dante and 
Shakespeare,are enough for it. That I will not dispute ; nor 
will I set up the Greek poets, from Pindar to Sophocles, as 
objects of blind worship. But no other poets so well show 
to the poetry of the present the way it must take ; no 
other poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason ; 
no other poets have made their work so well balanced ; no 
other poets, who have so well satisfied the thinking-power, 
have so well sati'sfied the religious sense : — 

^^ Oh ! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy in- 
nocence of word and deed, the path which august laws or- 
dain, laws that in the highest empyrean had their birth, 
of which Heaven is the father alone, neither did the race 
of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them 
to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and 
groweth not old." 

Let St. Francis, — nay, or Luther either, — beat that ! 



VII. 

A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 

EvEKYBODT has this last antnmn ^ been either seeing the 
Ammergau Passion Play or hearing about it ; and to find 
any one who has seen it and not been deeply interested 
and moved by it, is very rare. The peasants of the neigh- 
boring country, the great and fashionable world, the 
ordinary tourist, were all at Ammergau, and were all de- 
liglited ; but what is said to have been especially remark- 
able was the affluence there of ministers of religion of all 
kinds. That Catholic peasants, whose religion has ac- 
customed them to show and spectacle, should be attracted 
by an admirable scenic representation of the great moments 
in the history of their religion, was natural ; that tourists 
and the fashionable world should be attracted by what was 
at once the fashion and a new sensation of a powerful sort, 
was natural ; that many of the ecclesiastics present should 
be attracted there, was natural too. Roman Catholic 
priests mustered strong, of course. The Protestantism of 
a great number of the Anglican clergy is supposed to be 
but languid, and Anglican ministers at Ammergau were 
sympathizers to be expected. But Protestant ministers of 
the most unimpeachable sort, Protestant Dissenting min- 
isters, were there, too, and showing favor and sympathy ; 
and this, to any one who remembers the almost universal 
feeling of Protestant Dissenters in this country, not many 
years ago, towards Rome and her religion, — the sheer ab- 
horrence of Papists and all their practices, — could not 
but be striking. It agrees with what is seen also in litera- 
ture, in the writings of Dissenters of the younger and 
more progressive sort, who show a disposition for regarding 

11871. 
164 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 165 

the Church of Home historically rather than polemically, 
a wish to do justice to the undoubted grandeur of certain 
institutions and men produced by that Church, quite novel, 
and quite alien to the simple belief of earlier times, that 
between Protestants and Eome there was a measureless 
gulf fixed. Something of this may, no doubt, be due to 
that keen eye for Nonconformist business in which our 
great bodies of Protestant Dissenters, to do them justice, 
are never wanting ; to a perception that the case against 
the Church of England may be yet further improved by 
contrasting her with the genuine article in her own eccle- 
siastical line, by pointing out that she is neither one thing 
nor the other to much purpose, by dilating on the magni- 
tude, reach, and impressiveness, on the great place in his- 
tory, of her rival, as compared with anything she can herself 
pretend to. Something of this there is, no doubt, in some 
of the modern Protestant sympathy for things Catholic. 
But in general that sympathy springs, in Churchmen and 
Dissenters alike, from another and a better cause, — from 
the spread of larger conceptions of religion, of man, and of 
history, than were current formerly. We have seen lately 
in the newspapers, that a clergyman, who in a popular 
lecture gave an account of the Passion Play at Ammergau, 
and enlarged on its impressiveness, was admonished by 
certain remonstrants, who told him it was his business, 
instead of occupying himself with these sensuous shows, 
to learn to walk by faith, not by sight, and to teach his 
fellow-men to do the same. But this severity seems to 
have excited wonder rather than praise ; so far had those 
wider notions about religion and about the range of our 
interest in religion, of which I have just spoken, con- 
ducted us. To this interest I propose to appeal in what 
I am going to relate. The Passion Play at Ammergau, 
with its immense audiences, the seriousness of its actors, 
the passionate emotion of its spectators, brought to my 
mind something of which I had read an account lately ; 
something produced, not in Bavaria nor in Christendom 
at all, but far away in that wonderful East, from which, 
wliatever airs of superiority Europe may justly give itself. 



166 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

all our religion has come and where religion, of some sort 
or other, has still an empire over men's feelings such as it 
has nowhere else. This product of the remote East I wish 
to exhibit while the remembrance of what has been seen 
at Ammergau is still fresh ; and we will see whether that 
bringing together of strangers and enemies who once 
seemed to be as far as the poles asunder, which Ammergau 
in such a remarkable way effected, does not hold good and 
find a parallel even in Persia. 

Count Gobineau, formerly Minister of France at Tehe- 
ran and at Athens, published, a few years ago, an interest- 
ing book on the present state of religion and philosophy in 
Central Asia. He is favorably known also by his studies 
in ethnology. His accomplishments and intelligence de- 
serve all respect, and in his book on religion and philos- 
ophy in Central Asia he has the great advantage of writing 
about things which he has followed with his own observa- 
tion and inquiry in the countries where they happened. 
The chief purpose of his book is to give a history of the 
career of Mirza Ali Mahommed, a Persian religious re- 
former, the original Bdh, and the founder of BdMsm, of 
which most people in England have at least heard the name. 
Bab means ^«j(e, the door or gate of life ; and in the ferment 
which now works in the Mahometan East, Mirza Ali Ma- 
hommed, — who seems to have b(3en made acquainted by 
Protestant missionaries with our Scriptures and by the 
Jews of Shiraz with Jewish traditions, to have studied, be- 
sides, the religion of the Ghebers, the old national religion 
of Persia, and to have made a sort of amalgam of the whole 
with Mahometanism, — presented himself, about five-and 
twenty years ago, as the door, the gate of life ; found disci- 
ples, sent forth writings, and finally became the cause of 
disturbances which led to his being executed on the 19tli 
of July, 1849, in the citadel of Tabriz. The Bab and his 
doctrines are a theme on which much might be said ; but 
I pass them by, except for one incident in the Bab's life, 
which I will notice. Like all religious Mahometans, he 
made the pilgrimage to Mecca ; and his meditations at 
that center of his religion first suggested his mission to 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 167 

him. Bat soon after his return to Bagdad he made another 
pilgrimage ; and it was in this pilgrimage that his mission 
became clear to him, and that his life was fixed. ^* He 
desired " — I will give an abridgment of Count Gobineau's 
own words — ^^to complete his impressions by going to 
Kufa, that he might visit the ruined mosque where Ali 
was assassinated, and where the place of his murder is still 
shown. He passed several days there in meditation. The 
place appears to have made a great impression on him ; 
he was entering on a course which might and must lead 
to some such catastrophe as had happened on the very 
spot where he stood, and where his mind's eye showed him 
the Imam Ali lying at his feet, with his body pierced and 
bleeding. His followers say that he then passed through 
a sort of moral agony which put an end to all the hesita- 
tions of the natural man within him. It is certain that 
when he arrived at Shiraz, on his return, he was a changed 
man. ISTo doubts troubled him any more : he was pene- 
trated and persuaded ; his part was taken." 

This Ali also, at whose tomb the Bab went through the 
spiritual crisis here recorded, is a familiar name to most of 
us. In general our knowledge of the East goes but a very 
little way ; yet almost every one has at least heard the 
name of Ali, the Lion of God, Mahomet's young cousin, 
the first person, after his wife, who believed in him, and 
who was declared by Mahomet in his gratitude his brother, 
delegate, and vicar. Ali was one of Mahomet's best and 
most successful captains. He married Fatima, the 
daughter of the Prophet ; his sons, Hassan and Hussein, 
were, as children, favorites with Mahomet, who had no 
son of his own to succeed him, and was expected to name 
Ali as his successor. He named no successor. At his 
death (the year 632 of our era) Ali was passed over, and 
the first caliph, or vicar and lieutenmit of Mahomet in 
the government of the state, was Abu-Bekr ; only the 
spiritual inheritance of Mahomet, the dignity of Imam, 
or Primate, devolved by right on Ali and his children. 
Ali, lion of God as in war he was, held aloof from politics 
and political intrigue, loved retirement and prayer, was 



168 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the most pious and disinterested of men. At Abn-Bekr's 
death he was again passed over in favor of Omar. 
Omar was succeeded by Othman, and still Ali remained 
tranquil. Othman was assassinated, and then Ali, chiefly 
to prevent disturbance and bloodshed, accepted (a. d. 
655) the caliphate. Meanwhile, the Mahometan armies 
had conquered Persia, Syria, and Egypt ; the Governor of 
Syria, Moawiyah, an able and ambitious man, set himself 
up as caliph, his title was recognized by Amrou, the 
Governor of Egypt, and a bloody and indecisive battle 
was fought in Mesopotamia between All's army and 
Moawiyah's. Gibbon shall tell the rest : — " In the temple 
of Mecca three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of 
the disorders of the church and state ; they soon agreed 
that the deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend 
Amrou, the Viceroy of Egypt, would restore the peace and 
unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his victim, 
poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly re- 
paired to the scene of action. Their resolution was 
equally desperate ; but the first mistook the person of 
Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat ; 
the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the 
second ; Ali, the lawful caliph, in the mosque of Kufa, 
received a mortal wound from the hand of the third." 

The events through which we have thus rapidly run 
ought to be kept in mind, for they are the elements of 
Mahometan history : any right understanding of the state 
of the Mahometan world is impossible without them. For 
that world is divided into the two great sects of Shiahs 
and Sunis. The Shiahs are those who reject the first three 
caliphs as usurpers, and begin with Ali as the first lawful 
successor of Mahomet ; the Sunis recognize Abu-Bekr, 
Omar, and Othman, as well as Ali, and regard the Shiahs 
as impious heretics. The Persians are Shiahs, and the 
Arabs and Turks are Sunis. Hussein, one of All's two 
sons, married a Persian princess, the daughter of Yezde- 
jerd the last of the Sassanian kings, the king whom the 
Mahometan conquest of Persia expelled ; and Persia, 
through this marriage, became specially connected with 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY 169 

the house of Ali. '^In the fourth age of the Hegira," 
says Gibbon, *'a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the 
ruins of Kufa. Many thousands of the Shiahs repose in 
holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God ; and the 
desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the 
Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious 
than the pilgrimage of Mecca." 

But to comprehend what I am going to relate from 
Count Gobineau, we must push our researches into Ma- 
hometan history a little further than the assassination of 
Ali. Moawiyah died in the year 680 of our era, nearly 
fifty years after the death of Mahomet. His son Yezid 
succeeded him on the throne of the caliphs at Damascus. 
During the reign of Moawiyah All's two sons, the Imams, 
Hassan and Hussein, lived with their families in religious 
retirement at Medina, where their grandfather Mahomet 
was buried. In them the character of abstention and re- 
nouncement, which we have noticed in Ali himself, was 
marked yet more strongly ; but, when Moawiyah died, the 
people of Kufa, the city on the lower Euphrates where Ali 
had been assassinated, sent offers to make Hussein caliph 
if he would come among them, and to support him against 
the Syrian troops of Yezid. Hussein seems to have 
thought himself bound to accept the proposal. He left 
Medina, and, with his family and relations, to the number 
of about eighty persons, set out on his way to Kufa. 
Then ensued the tragedy so familiar to every Mahometan, 
and to us so little known, the tragedy of Kerbela. ^' 
death," cries the bandit-minstrel of Persia, Kurroglou, in 
his last song before his execution, */ death, whom didst 
thou spare ? Were even Hassan and Hussein, those foot- 
stools of the throne of God on the seventh heaven, spared 
by thee. No ! tliou madest tliem martyrs at Kerhela." 

We cannot do better than again have recourse to Gib- 
bon's history for an account of this famous tragedy. 
*^ Hussein traversed the desert of Arabia with a- timorous 
retinue of women and children ; but, as he approached 
the confines of Irak, he was alarmed by the solitary or 
hostile face of the country, and suspected either the de^ 



170 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

fection or the ruin of his party. His fears were just ; 
Obeidallah, the governor of Kufa, had extinguished the 
first sparks of an insurrection ; and Hussein, in the plain 
of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of 5000 horse, who 
intercepted his communication with the city and the 
river. In a conference with the chief of the enemy he 
proposed the option of three conditions : — that he should 
be allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a fron- 
tier garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the 
presence of Yezid. But the commands of the caliph or 
his lieutenant were stern and absolute, and Hussein was 
informed that he must either submit as a captive and a 
criminal to the Commander of the Faithful, or expect the 
consequences of his rebellion. '^'Do you think," replied 
he, ''to terrify me with death ?" And during the short 
respite of a night he prepared, with calm and solemn 
resignation, to encounter his fate. He checked the 
lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the im- 
pending ruin of his house. " Our trust," said Hussein, 
'*' is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and earth, 
must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my 
father, my mother, were better than I, and every Mussul- 
man has an example in the Prophet." He pressed his 
friends to consult their safety by a timely flight ; they 
unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved 
master, and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer 
and the assurance of paradise. On the morning of the 
fatal day he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one 
hand and the Koran in the other ; the flanks and rear of 
his party were secure^ by the tent-ropes and by a deep 
trench, which they had filled with lighted fagots, accord- 
ing to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced 
with reluctance ; and one of their chiefs deserted, with 
thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable 
death. In every close onset or single combat the despair 
of the Fatimites was invincible ; but the surrounding 
multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of 
arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain. 
A truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer ; 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. i;i 

and the battle at length expired by the death of the last 
of the companions of Hussein." 

The details of Hussein's own death will come better 
presently ; suffice it at this moment to say he was slain, 
and that the women and children of his family were taken 
in chains to the Caliph Yezid at Damascus. Gibbon con- 
cludes the story thus : ^'^In a distant age and climate, the 
tragic scene of the death of Hussein will awaken the sym- 
pathy of the coldest reader. On the annual festival of his 
martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulcher, his 
Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious 
phrenzy of sorrow and indignation." 

Thus the tombs of Ali and of his son, the Meshed Ali 
and the Meshed Hussein, standing some thirty miles apart 
from one another in the plain of the Euphrates, had, 
when Gibbon wrote, their yearly pilgrims and their tribute 
of enthusiastic mourning. But Count Gobineau relates, 
in his book of which I have spoken, a development of 
these solemnities which was unknown to Gibbon. Within 
the present century there has arisen, on the basis of this 
story of the martyrs of Kerbela, a drama, a Persian na- 
tional drama, which Count Gobineau, who has seen and 
heard it, is bold enough to rank with the Greek drama as 
a great and serious affair, engaging the heart and life of 
the people who have given birth to it ; while the Latin, 
English, French, and German drama is, he says, in com- 
parison a mere pastime or amusement, more or less in- 
tellectual and elegant. To me it seems that the Persian 
tazyas — for so these pieces are called — find a better par- 
allel in the Ammergau Passion Play than in the Greek 
drama. They turn entirely on one subject — the sufferings 
of the Family of the Tent, as the Imam Hussein and the 
company of persons gathered around him at Kerbela are 
called. The subject is sometimes introduced by a pro- 
logue, which may perhaps one day, as the need of variety 
is more felt, become a piece by itself ; but at present the 
prologue leads invariably to the martyrs. For instance : 
the Emperor Tamerlane, in his conquering progress 
through the world, arrives at Damascus. The keys of the 



172 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

city are bronght to him by the governor ; but the governor 
is a descendant of one of the murderers of the Imam Hus- 
sein ; Tamerhme is informed of it, loads him with re- 
proaches, and drives him from his presence. The emperor 
presently sees the governor's daughter splendidly dressed, 
thinks of the sufferings of the holy women of the Family 
of the Tent, and upbraids and drives her away as he did 
lier father. But after this he is haunted by the great 
tragedy which has been thus brought to his mind, and he 
cannot sleep and cannot be comforted. He calls his 
vizier, and his vizier tells him that the only way to soothe 
his troubled spirit is to see a tazya. And so the tazya 
commences. Or, again (and this will show how strangely, 
in the religious world which is n-ow occupying us, what is 
most familiar to us is blended with that of which we 
know nothing) : Joseph and his brethren appear on the 
stage, and the old Bible story is transacted. Joseph is 
thrown into the pit and sold to the merchants, and his 
blood-stained coat is carried by his brothers to Jacob ; 
Jacob is then left alone, weeping and bewailing himself ; 
the angel Gabriel enters, and reproves him for his want 
of faith and constancy, telling him that what he suffers is 
not a hundredth part of what Ali, Hussein, and the 
children of Hussein will one day suffer. Jacob seems to 
doubt it ; Gabriel, to convince him, orders the angels to 
perform a tazya of what will one day happen at Kerbela. 
And so the tazya commences. 

These pieces are given in the first ten days of the month 
of Moharrem, the anniversary of the martyrdom at Ker- 
bela. They are so popular that they now invade other 
seasons of the year also ; but this is the season when the 
world is given up to them. King and people, every one 
is in mourning ; and at night and while the tazyas are 
not going on, processions keep passing, the air resounds 
with the beating of breasts and with litanies of *^ Has- 
san ! Hussein ! " while the Seyids, — a kind of popular 
friars claiming to be descendants of Mahomet, and in 
whose incessant popularizing and amplifying of the legend 
of Kerbela in their homilies during pilgrimages and at the 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. I73 

tombs of the martyrs, the tazyas, no doubt, had their 
origin, — keep up by their sermons and hymns the enthusi- 
asm which the drama of the day has excited. It seems as 
if no one went to bed ; and certainly no one who went to 
bed could sleep. Confraternities go in procession with a 
black flag and torches, every man with his shirt torn open, 
and beating himself with the right hand on the left 
shoulder in a kind of measured cadence to accompany a 
canticle in honor of the martyrs. These processions come 
and take post in the theaters where the Seyids are preach- 
ing. Still more noisy are the companies of dancers, strik- 
ing a kind of wooden castanets together, at one time in 
front of their breasts, at another time behind their heads, 
and marking time with music and dance to a dirge set up 
by the bystanders, in which the names of the Imams 
perpetually recur as a burden. Noisiest of all are the 
Berbers, men of a darker skin and another race, their feet 
and the upper part of their body naked, who carry, some 
of them tambourines and cymbals, others iron chains and 
long needles. One of their race is said to have formerly 
derided the Imams in their affliction, and the Berbers now 
appear in expiation of that crime. At first their music 
and their march proceed slowly together, but presently 
the music quickens, the chain and needle-bearing Ber- 
bers move violently round, and begin to beat themselves 
with their chains and to prick their arms and cheeks with 
the needles — first gently, then with more vehemence ; till 
suddenly the music ceases, and all stops. So we are 
carried back, on this old Asiatic soil, where beliefs and 
usages are heaped layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, 
far past the martyred Imams, past Mahometanism, past 
Christianity, to the priests of Baal gashing themselves 
with knives and to the worship of Adonis. 

The tehyas, or theaters for the drama which calls forth 
these celebrations, are constantly multiplying. The 
king, the great functionaries, the towns, wealthy citizens 
like the king's goldsmith, or any private person who has 
the means and the desire, provide them. Every one sends 
contributions ; it is a religious act to furnish a box or to 



174 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

give decorations for a tehya ; and as religious offerings, all 
gifts down to the smallest are accepted. There are tekyas 
for not more than three or four hundred spectators, and 
there are tekyas for three or four thousand. At Ispahan 
there are representations which bring together more than 
twenty thousand people. At Teheran, the Persian capital, 
each quarter of the town has its tekyas, every square and 
open place is turned to account for establishing them, and 
spaces have been expressly cleared, besides, for fresh tekyas. 
Count Gobineau describes particularly one of these 
theaters, — a tekya of the best class, to hold an audience 
of about four thousand, — at Teheran. The arrangements 
are very simple. The tekya is a walled parallelogram, 
with a brick platform, sakou, in the center of it ; this 
sahou is surrounded with black poles at some distance 
from each other, the poles are joined at the top by hori- 
zontal rods of the same color, and from these rods hang 
colored lamps, which are lighted for the praying and 
preaching at night when the representation is over. The 
sahou, or central platform, makes the stage ; in connection 
with it, at one of the opposite extremities of the parallel- 
ogram lengthwise, is a reserved box, tdgmimd, higher than 
the sakou. This box is splendidly decorated, and is used 
for peculiarly interesting and magnificent tableaux, — the 
court of the Caliph, for example — which occur in the 
course of the piece. A passage of a few feet wide is left 
free between the stage and this box ; all the rest of the 
space is for the spectators, of whom the foremost rows are 
sitting on their heels close up to this passage, so that they 
help the actors to mount and descend the high steps of the 
tdgnumd when they have to pass between that and the 
sakou. On each side of the tdg7mmd are boxes, and along 
one wall of the enclosure are other boxes with fronts of 
elaborate woodwork, which are left to stand as a permanent 
part of the construction ; facing these, with the floor and 
stage between, rise tiers of seats as in an amphitheater. 
All places are free ; the great people have generally pro- 
vided and furnished the boxes, and take care to fill them ; 
but if a box is not occupied when the performance begins. 



I 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 175 

any ragged street-urcliin or beggar may walk in and seat 
himself there. A row of gigantic masts runs across the 
middle of the space, one or two of them being fixed in the 
sahoio itself ; and from these masts is stretched an immense 
awning which protects the whole audience. Up to a cer- 
tain height these masts are hung with tiger and panther 
skins, to indicate the violent character of the scenes to be 
represented. Shields of steel and of hippopotamus skin, 
flags, and naked swords, are also attached to these masts. 
A sea of color and splendor meets the eye all round. 
Woodwork and brickwork disappear under cushions, rich 
carpets, silk hangings, India muslin embroidered with 
silver and gold, shawls from Kerman and from Cashmere. 
There are lamps, lusters of colored crystal, mirrors, Bohe- 
mian and Venetian glass, porcelain vases of all degrees of 
magnitude from China and from Europe, paintings and 
engravings, displayed in profusion everywhere. The taste 
may not always be soberly correct, but the whole spectacle 
has j,ust the effect of prodigality, color, and sumptuousness 
which we are accustomed to associate with the splendors 
of the Arabian Xights. 

In marked contrast with this display is the poverty of 
scenic contrivance and stage illusion. The subject is far 
too interesting and too solemn to need them. The actors 
are visible on all sides, and the exits, entrances, and stage- 
play of our theaters are impossible ; the imagination of 
the spectator fills up all gaps and meets all requirements. 
On the Ammergau arrangements one feels that the archae- 
ologists and artists of Munich have laid their correct finger ; 
at Teheran there has been no schooling of this sort. A 
copper basin of water represents the Euphrates ; aheap of 
chopped straw in a corner is the sand of the desert of 
Kerbela, and the actor goes and takes up a handful of it, 
when his part requires him to throw, in Oriental fashion, 
dust upon his head. There is no attempt at proper cos- 
tume ; all that is sought is to do honor to the personages 
of chief interest by dresses and jewels which would pass 
for rich and handsome things to wear in modern Persian 
life. The power of the actors is in their genuine sense of 



176 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the seriousness of the business they are engaged in. They 
are, like the public around them, penetrated with this, and 
so the actor throws his whole soul into what he is about, 
the public meets the actor halfway, and effects of extraor- 
dinary impressiveness are the result. *^ The actor is 
under a charm," says Count Gobineau ; '''he is under it 
so strongly and completely that almost always one sees 
Yezid himself (the usurping caliph), the wretched Ibn- 
Said (Yezid's general), the infamous Shemer (Ibn-Said's 
lieutenant), at the moment they vent the cruellest insults 
against the Imams whom they are going to massacre, or 
against the women of the Imam's family whom they are 
ill-using, burst into tears and repeat their part with sobs. 
The public is neither surprised nor displeased at this ; on 
the contrary, it beats its breast at the sight, throws up its 
arms towards heaven with invocations of God, and re- 
doubles its groans. So it often happens that the actor 
identifies himself with the personage he represents to such 
a degree that, when the situation carries him away, he can- 
not be said to act, he is with such truth, such complete 
enthusiasm, such utter self-forgetfulness, what he repre- 
sents, that he reaches a reality at one time sublime, at an- 
other terrible, and produces impressions on his audience 
which it would be simply absurd to look for from our more 
artificial performances. There is nothing stilted, nothing 
false, nothing conventional ; nature, and the facts repre- 
sented, themselves speak." 

The actors are men and boys, the parts of angels and 
women being filled by boys. The children who appear in 
the piece are often the children of the principal families 
of Teheran ; their appearance in this religious solemnity 
(for such it is thought) being supposed to bring a blessing 
upon them and their parents. " Nothing is more touch- 
ing/' says Count Gobineau, *'than to see these little things 
of three or four years old, dressed in black gauze frocks 
with large sleeves, and having on their heads small round 
black caps embroidered with silver and gold, kneeling 
beside the body of the actor who represents the martyr of 
the day, embracing him, and with their little hands cover- 



I 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 177 

ing themselves with chopped straw for sand in sign of 
grief. These children evidently/' he continnes, ^' do not 
consider themselves to be acting ; they are full of the feel- 
ing that what they are about is something of deep serious- 
ness and importance ; and though they are too young to 
comprehend fully the story, they know, in general, that it 
is a matter sad and solemn. They are not distracted by 
the audience, and they are not shy, but go through their 
prescribed part with the utmost attention and seriousness, 
always crossing their arms respectfully to receive the bless- 
ing of the Imam Hussein ; the public beholds them with 
emotions of the liveliest satisfaction and sympathy." 

The dramatic pieces themselves are without any author's 
name. They are in popular language, such as the com- 
monest and most ignorant of the Persian people can under- 
stand, free from learned Arabic words, — free, comparative- 
ly speaking, from Oriental fantasticality and hyperbole. 
The Seyids, or popular friars, already spoken of, have 
probably had a hand in the composition of many of them. 
The Moollahs, or regular ecclesiastical authorities, con- 
demn the whole thing. It is an innovation which they 
disapprove and think dangerous ; it is addressed to the 
eye, and their religion forbids to represent religious things 
to the eye ; it departs from the limits of what is revealed 
and appointed to be taught as the truth, and brings in 
novelties and heresies ; — for these dramas keep growing 
under the pressure of the actor's imagination and emotion, 
and of the imagination and emotion of the public, and 
receive new developments every day. The learned, again, 
say that these pieces are a heap of lies, the production of 
ignorant people, and have no words strong enough to ex- 
press their contempt for them. Still, so irresistible is 
tlie vogue of these sacred dramas that, from the king on 
the throne to the beggar in the street, every one, except 
perhaps the Moollahs, attends them, and is carried away 
by tbem. The Imams and their families speak always in 
a kind of lyrical chant, said to have rhj^thmical effects, 
often of great pathos and beauty ; their persecutors, the 
villains of the piece, speak always in prose. 



178 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

The stage is under the direction of a choragus, called 
oostad, or ** master," who is a sacred personage by reason 
of the functions which he performs. Sometimes he ad- 
dresses to the audience a commentary on what is passing 
before them, and asks their compassion and tears for the 
martyrs ; sometimes in default of a Seyid, he prays and 
preaches. He is always listened to with veneration, for 
it is he who arranges the whole sacred spectacle which so 
deeply moves everybody. With no attempt at conceal- 
ment, with the book of the piece in his hand, he remains 
constantly on the stage, gives the actors their cue, puts 
the children and any inexperienced actor in their right 
places, dresses the martyr in his winding-sheet when he 
is going to his death, holds the stirrup for him to mount 
his horse, and inserts a supply of chopped straw into the 
hands of those who are about to want it. Let us now see 
liim at work. 

The theater is filled, and the heat is great ; young men 
of rank, the king's pages, officers of the army, smart 
functionaries of State, move through the crowd with water- 
skins slung on their backs, dealing out water all round, 
in memory of the thirst which on these solemn days the 
Imams suffered in the sands of Kerbela. Wild chants and 
litanies, such as we have already described, are from time 
to time set up, by a dervish, a soldier, a workman in the 
crowd. These chants are taken up, more or less, by the 
audience : sometimes they flag and die away for want of 
support, sometimes they are continued till they reach a 
paroxysm, and then abruptly stop. Presently a strange, 
insignificant figure in a green cotton garment, looking like 
a petty tradesman of one of the Teheran bazaars, mounts 
upon the sakou. He beckons with his hand to the audi- 
ence, who are silent directly, and addresses them in a tone 
of lecture and expostulation, thus : — 

*' Well, you seem happy enough, Mussulmans, sitting 
there at your ease under the awning ; and you imagine 
Paradise already wide open to you. Do you know what 
Paradise is ? It is a garden, doubtless, but such a garden 
as you have no idea of. You will say to me : ^ Friend, 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. I79 

tell nswhat it is like/ I have never been there, certainly ; 
but plenty of prophets have described it, and angels have 
brought news of it. However, all I will tell you is, that 
there is room for all good people there, for it is 330,000 
cubits long. If you do not believe, inquire. As for get- 
ting to be one of the good people, let me tell you it is not 
enough to read the Koran of the Prophet (the salvation 
and blessing of God be upon him ! ) ; it is not enough to do 
everything which this divine book enjoins ; it is not enough 
to come and weep at the tazyas, as you do every day, you 
sons of dogs you, who know nothing which is of any use ; 
it behoves, besides, that your good works (if you ever do 
any, which I greatly doubt) should be done in the name 
and for the love of Hussein. It is Hussein, Mussulmans, 
who is the door to Paradise ; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, 
who upholds the world ; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, by 
whom comes salvation ! Cry, Hassan, Hussein ! '' 
And all the multitude cry : '^0 Hassan ! Hus- 



sein 



T" 



*^ That is well ; and now cry again. ^^ And again all cry : 
'* Hassan ! Hussein ! " " And now,'' the strange 
speaker goes on, *'pray to God to keep you continually in 
the love of Hussein. Come, make your cry to God." 
Then the multitude, as one man, throw up their arms into 
the air, and with a deep and long-drawn cry exclaim : 
*^ Ta Allah! God!" 

Fifes, drums, and trumpets break out ; the hernas, 
great copper trumpets five or six feet long, give notice 
that the actors are ready and that the tazya is to com- 
mence. The preacher descends from the sahou, and the 
actors occupy it. 

To give a clear notion of the cycle which these dramas 
fill, we should begin, as on the first day of the Moharrem 
the actors begin, with some piece relating to the childhood 
of the Imams, such as, for instance, the piece called The 
Children Digging. Ali and Fatiraa are living at Medina 
with their little sons Hassan and Hussein. The simple 
home and occupations of the pious family are exhibited ; 
it is morning, Fatima is seated with the little Hussein on 



180 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

her lap, dressing him. She combs his hair, talking caress- 
ingly to him all the while. A hair comes out with the 
comb ; the child starts. Fatima is in distress at having 
given the child even this momentary uneasiness, and stops 
to gaze upon him tenderl3^ She falls into an anxious 
reverie, thinking of her fondness for the child, and of the 
unknown future in store for him. While she muses, the 
angel Gabriel stands before her. He reproves her weak- 
ness : '^A hair falls from the child^s head,'' he says, 
^^and you weep; what would you do if you knew the 
destiny that awaits him, the countless wounds with which 
that body shall one day be pierced, the agony that shall 
rend your own soul ! " Fatima, in despair, is comforted 
by her husband Ali, and they go together into the town 
to hear Mahomet preach. The boys and some of their 
little friends begin to play ; every one makes a great deal 
of Hussein ; he is at once the most spirited and the most 
amiable child of them all. The party amuse themselves 
with digging, with making holes in the ground and build- 
ing mounds. Ali returns from the sermon and asks what 
thev are about ; and Hussein is made to reply in ambigu- 
ous and prophetic answers, which convey that by these 
holes and mounds in the earth are prefigured interments 
and tombs. Ali departs again ; there rush in a number 
of big and fierce boys, and begin to pelt the little Imams 
with stones. A companion shields Hussein with his own 
body, but he is struck down with a stone, and with 
another stone Hussein, too, is stretched on the ground 
senseless. Who are those boy-tyrants and persecutors ? 
They are Ibn-Said, and Shemer, and others, the future 
murderers at Kerbela. The audience perceive it with 
a shudder ; the hateful assailants go off in triumph ; Ali 
re-enters, picks up the stunned and wounded children, 
brings them round, and takes Hussein back to his mother 
Fatima. 

But let us now come at once to the days of martyrdom 
and to Kerbela. One of the most famous pieces of the 
cycle is a piece called the Marriage of Kassem, which 
brings us into the very middle of these crowning days. 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 181 

Connt Gobineaa has given a translation of it, and from 
this translation we will take a few extracts. Kassem is 
the son of Hnssein's elder brother, the Imam Hassan, who 
had been poisoned by Yezid's instigation at Medina. Kas- 
sem and his mother are with the Imam Hussein at Ker- 
bela ; there, too, are the women and children of the holy 
family, Omm-Leyla, Hnssein's wife, the Persian princess, 
the last child of Yezdejerd the last of the Sassanides ; 
Zeyneb, Hussein's sister, the offspring, like himself, of Ali 
and Fatima, and the granddaughter of Mahomet ; his 
nephew Abdallah, still a little child ; finally, his beautiful 
daughter Zobeyda. When the piece begins, the Imam's 
camp in the desert has already been cut off from the Eu- 
phrates and besieged several days by the Syrian troops 
»under Ibn-Said and Shemer, and by the treacherous men 
of Kufa. The Family of the Tent were suffering torments 
of thirst. One of the children had brought an empty 
water-bottle, and thrown it, a silent token of distress, before 
the feet of Abbas, the uncle of Hussein ; Abbas had sal- 
lied out to cut his way to the river, and had been slain. 
Afterwards Ali-Akber, Hussein's eldest son, had made 
the same attempt and met with the same fate. Two 
younger brothers of Ali-Akber followed his example, and 
were likewise slain. The Imam Hussein had rushed amidst 
the enemy, beaten them from the body of Ali-Akber, and 
brought the body back to his tent ; but the river was still 
inaccessible. At this point the action of the Marriage of 
Kassem begins. Kassem, a youth of sixteen, is burning 
to go out and avenge his cousin. At one end of the sakou 
is the Imam Hussein seated on his throne ; in the middle 
are grouped all the members of his family ; at the other 
end lies the body of Ali-Akber, with his mother Omm- 
Leyla, clothed and veiled in black, bending over it. The 
Jcernas sound, and Kassem, after a solemn appeal from 
Hussein and his sister Zeyneb to God and to the founders 
of their house to look upon their great distress, rises and 
speaks to himself : 

Kassem. — '' Separate thyself from the women of the 
harem, Kassem. Consider within thyself for a little j 



182 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

here thou sittest, and presently thon wilt see the body of 
Hussein, that body like a flower, torn by arrows and lances 
like thorns, Kassem. 

*' Thou sawest Ali-Akber's head severed from his body 
on the field of battle, and yet thou livedst ! 

" Arise, obey that which is written of thee by thy father ; 
to be slain, that is thy lot, Kassem ! 

'* Go, get leave from the son of Fatima, most honorable 
among women, and submit thyself to thy fate, Kassem." 

Hussein sees him approach. '' Alas,'' he says, "it is 
the orphan nightingale of the garden of Hassan, my 
brother ! " Then Kassem speaks : 

Kassem. — " God, what shall I do beneath this load of 
affliction ? My eyes are wet with tears, my lips are dried up 
with thirst. To live is worse than to die. What shall I 
do, seeing what hath befallen Ali-Akber ? If Hussein 
suffereth me not to go forth, oh misery ! For then what 
shall I do, God, in the day of the resurrection, when I 
see my father Hassan ? When I see my mother in the day 
of the resurrection, what shall I do, God, in my sorrow 
and shame before her ? All my kinsmen are gone to 
appear before the Prophet : shall not I also one day stand 
before the Prophet ; and what shall I do, God, in that 
day?" 

Then he addresses the Imam : — 

^' Hail, threshold of the honor and majesty on high, 
threshold of heaven, threshold of God ! In the roll of 
martyrs thou art the chief ; in the book of creation thy 
story will live for ever. An orphan, a fatherless child, 
downcast and weeping, comes to prefer a request to thee." 

Hussein bids him tell it, and he answers : — 

" light of the eyes of Mahomet the mighty, lieuten- 
ant of Ali the lion ! Abbas has perished, Ali-Akber has 
suffered martyrdom. my uncle, thou hast no warriors 
left, and no standard-bearer ! The roses are gone and gone 
are their buds ; the jessamine is gone, the poppies are gone. 
I alone, I am still left in the garden of the Faith, a thorn, 
and miserable. If thou hast any kindness for the orphan, 
suffer me to go forth and fight." 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 183 

Hussein refuses. ''My child/' he says, ''thou wast 
the light of the eyes of the Imam Hassan, thou art my 
beloved remembrance of him ; ask me not this ; urge me 
not, entreat me not ; to have lost Ali-Akber is enough." 

Kassem answers : — " That Kassem should live and Ali- 
Akber be marytred — sooner let the earth cover me ! O 
king, be generous to the beggar at thy gate. See how my 
eyes run over with tears and my lips are dried up with 
thirst. Cast thine eyes toward the waters of the heavenly 
Euphrates ! I die of thirst ; grant me, thou marked of 
God, a full pitcher of the water of life ! it flows in the 
Paradise which awaits me." 

Hussein still refuses ; Kassem breaks forth in complaints 
and lamentations, his mother comes to him and learns the 
reason. She then says :^- 

" Complain not against the Imam, light of my eyes ; 
only by his order can the commission of martyrdom be 
given. In that commission are sealed two-and-seventy 
witnesses, all righteous, and among the two-and-seventy is 
thy name. Know that thy destiny of death is commanded 
in the writing which thou wearest on thine arm." 

This writing is the testament of his father Hassan. He 
bears it in triumph to the Imam Hussein, who finds 
written there that he should, on the death-plain of Ker- 
bela, suffer Kassem to have his will, but that he should 
marry him first to his daughter Zobeyda. Kassem consents, 
though in astonishment. " Consider," he says, " there 
lies Ali-Akber, mangled by the enemies' hands ! Under 
this sky of ebon blackness, how can joy show her face ? 
Nevertheless if thou commandest it, what have I to do 
but obey ? Thy commandment is that of the Prophet, and 
his voice is that of God." But Hussein has also to over- 
come the reluctance of the intended bride and of all the 
women of his family. 

" Heir of the vicar of God," says Kassem's mother to 
the Imam, " bid me die, but speak not to me of a bridal. 
If Zobeyda is to be a bride and Kassem a bridegroom, 
where is the henna to tinge their hands, where is the 
bridal chamber ? " " Mother of Kassem," answers the 



184 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Imam solemnly, "yet a few moments, and in this field of 
anguish the tomb shall be for marriage-bed, and the wind- 
ing-sheet for bridal garment ! " All give way to the will 
of their sacred Head. The women and children surround 
Kassem, sprinkle him with rose-water, hang bracelets and 
necklaces on him, and scatter bon-bons around ; and then 
the marriage procession is formed. Suddenly drums and 
trumpets are heard, and the Syrian troops appear. Ibn- 
Said and Shemer are at their head. "'The Prince of the 
Faith celebrates a marriage in the desert,^' they exclaim 
tauntingly ; " we will soon change his festivity into 
mourning.'^ They pass by, and Kassem takes leave of his 
bride. "God keep thee, my bride," he says, embracing 
her, "for I must forsake thee !" " One moment," she 
says, " remain in thy place one moment ! thy countenance 
is as the lamp which giveth us light ; suffer me to turn 
around thee as the butterfly turneth, gently, gently!" 
And making a turn around him, she performs the ancient 
Eastern rites of respect from a new-married wife to her 
husband. Troubled, he rises to go : " The reins of my 
will are slipping away from me ! " he murmurs. She lays 
hold of his robe : " Take off thy hand," he cries, "we be- 
long not to ourselves ! " 

Then he asks the Imam to array him in his winding- 
sheet. " nightingale of the divine orchard of martyr- 
dom," says Hussein, as he complies with his wish, " I 
clothe thee with thy winding-sheet, I kiss thy face ; there 
is no fear, and no hope, but of God ! " Kassem commits 
his little brother Abdallah to the Imam's care. 0mm- 
Leyla looks up from her son's corpse, and says to Kassem : 
" When thou enterest the garden of Paradise, kiss for me 
the head of Ali-Akber ! " 

The Syrian troops again appear. Kassem rushes upon 
them and they all go off fighting. The Family of the 
Tent, at Hussein's command, put the Koran on their heads 
and pray, covering themselves with sand. Kassem reap- 
pears victorious. He has slain Azrek, a chief captain of 
the Syrians, but his thirst is intolerable. "Uncle," he 
says to the Imam, who asks him what reward he wishes for 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY, 185 

his valor, ^' my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth ; 
the reward I wish is loater.''^ **^ Thou coverest me with 
shame, Kassem/' his uncle answers ; ^^ what can I do ? 
Thou askest water ; there is no water ! ^' 

Kassem. — '' If I might but wet my mouth, I could pres- 
ently make an end of the men of Kufa." 

Hussein. — " As I live, I have not one drop of 
water ! " 

Kassem. — '^ Were it but lawful, I would wet my mouth 
with my own blood." 

Hussein. — ^' Beloved child, what the Prophet forbids, 
that cannot I make lawful." 

Kassem. — " I beseech thee, let my lips be but once 
moistened, and I will vanquish thine enemies ! " 

Hussein presses his own lips to those of Kassem, who, re- 
freshed, again rushes forth, and returns bleeding and 
stuck with darts, to die at the Imam's feet in the tent. 
So ends the marriage of Kassem. 

But the great day is the tenth day of the Moharrem, 
when comes the death of the Imam himself. The nar- 
rative of Gibbon well sums up the events of this great 
tenth day. ^^ The battle at length expired by the death 
of the last of the companions of Hussein. Alone, weary, 
and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. 
He was pierced in the mouth with a dart. He lifted his 
hands to heaven — they were full of blood — and he uttered 
a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a trans- 
port of despair, his sister issued from the tent, and ad- 
jured the general of the Kufians that he would not suffer 
Hussein to be murdered before his eyes. A tear trickled 
down the soldier's venerable beard ; and the boldest of his 
men fell back on every side as the dying Imam threw him- 
self among them. The remorseless Shemer — a name de- 
tested by the faithful — reproached their cowardice ; and 
the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three and thirty 
strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on 
his body, they carried his head to the castle of Kufa, and 
the inhuman Obeidallah (the governor) struck him on the 
mouth with a cane. ' Alas ! ' exclaimed an aged Mussul- 



186 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

man, ' on those lips have I seen the lips of the Apostle 
of God!'" 

For this catastrophe no one tazya suffices ; all the com- 
panies of actors unite in a vast open space ; booths and 
tents are pitched round the outside circle for the spectators ; 
in the center is the Imam's camp, and the day ends with 
its conflagration. 

Nor are there wanting pieces which carry on the story 
beyond the death of Hussein. One which produces an 
extraordinary effect is The Christian Damsel. The car- 
nage is over, the enemy are gone. To the awe-struck be- 
holders, the scene shows the silent plain of Kerbela and 
the tombs of the martyrs. Their bodies, full of wounds, 
and with weapons sticking in them still, are exposed to 
view ; but around them all are crowns of burning candles, 
circles of light, to show that they have entered into glory. 
At one end of the sakoii is a high tomb by itself ; it is the 
tomb of the Imam Hussein, and his pierced body is seen 
stretched out upon it. A brilliant caravan enters, with 
camels, soldiers, servants, and a young lady on horseback, 
in European costume, or what passes in Persia for 
European costume. She halts near the tombs and pro- 
poses to encamp. Her servants try to pitch a tent ; but 
wherever they drive a pole into the ground, blood springs 
up, and a groan of horror bursts from the audience. Then 
the fair traveler, instead of encamping, mounts into the 
tdg7iumd, lies down to rest there, and falls asleep. Jesus 
Christ appears to her, and makes known that this is Ker- 
bela, and what has happened here. Meanwhile, an Arab 
of the desert, a Bedouin who had formerly received 
Hussein's bounty, comes stealthily, intent on plunder, 
upon the sahou. He finds nothing, and in a paroxysm of 
brutal fury he begins to ill-treat the corpses. Blood flows. 
The feeling of Asiatics about their dead is well known, and 
the horror of the audience rises to its height. Presently 
the ruffian assails and wounds the corpse of the Imam him- 
self, over whom white doves are hovering ; the voice of 
Hussein, deep and mournful, calls from his tomb : '^ There 
is no God hut GodT'' The robber flies in terror; the 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 187 

angels, the prophets, Mahomet, Jesus Christ, Moses, the 
Imams, the holy women, all come upon the sahou, press 
round Hussein, load him with honors. The Christian 
damsel wakes, and embraces Islam, the Islam of the sect 
of the Shiahs. 

Another piece closes the whole story, by bringing the 
captive women and children of the Imam's family to 
Damascus, to the presence of the Caliph Yezid. It is in 
this piece that there comes the magnificent tableau, already 
mentioned, of the court of the caliph. The crown jewels 
are lent for it, and the dresses of the ladies of Yezid's 
court, represented by boys chosen for their good looks, are 
said to be worth thousands and thousands of pounds ; but 
the audience see them without favor, for this brilliant 
court of Yezid is cruel to the captives of Kerbela. The 
captives are thrust into a wretched dungeon under the 
palace walls ; but the Caliph's wife had formerly been a 
slave of Mahomet's daughter Fatima, the mother of 
Hussein and Zeyneb. She goes to see Zeyneb in prison, 
her heart is touched, she passes into an agony of repentance, 
returns to her husband, upbraids him with his crimes, and 
intercedes for the women of the holy family, and for the 
children, who keep calling for the Imam Hussein. Yezid 
orders his wife to be put to death, and sends the head of 
Hussein to the children. Sekyna, the Imam's youngest 
daughter, a child of four years old, takes the beloved head 
in her arms, kisses it, and lies down beside it. Then 
Hussein appears to her as in life : " Oh ! my father," she 
cries, ^' where wast thou ? I was hungry, I was cold, I 
was beaten — where wast thou ? " But now she sees him 
again, and is happy. In the vision of her happiness she 
passes away out of this troublesome life, she enters into 
rest, and the piece ends with her mother and her aunts 
burying her. 

These are the martyrs of Kerbela ; and these are the 
sufferings which awaken in an Asiatic audience sympathy 
so deep and serious, transports so genuine of pity, love, 
and gratitude, that to match them at all one must take 
the feehngs raised at Ammergau. And now, where are 



18S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

we to look, in the subject-matter of the Persian passion- 
phiy, for the source of all this emotion ? 

Count Gobineau suggests that it is to be found in the 
feeling of patriotism ; and that our Indo-European kins- 
men, the Persians, conquered by the Semitic Arabians, 
find in the sufferings of Hussein a portrait of their own 
martyrdom. ** Hussein,^' says Count Gobineau, " is not 
only the son of Ali, he is the husband of a princess of the 
blood of the Persian kings ; he, his father Ali, the whole 
body of Imams taken together, represent the nation, 
represent Persia, invaded, ill-treated, despoiled, stripped 
of its inhabitants, by the Arabians. The right which is 
insulted and violated in Hussein, is identified with the 
right of Persia. The Arabians, the Turks, the Afghans, 
— Persia's implacable and hereditary enemies, — recognize 
Yezid as legitimate caliph ; Persia finds therein an excuse 
for hating them the more, and identifies herself the more 
with the usurper's victims. It is ^patriotism therefore, 
which has taken the form, here, of the drama to express 
itself." No doubt there is much truth in what Count 
Gobineau thus says ; and it is certain that the division of 
Shiahs and Sunis has its true cause in a division of races, 
rather than in a difference of religious belief. 

But I confess that if the interest of the Persian passion- 
plays had seemed to me to lie solely in the curious evi- 
dence they afford of the workings of patriotic feeling in a 
conquered people, I should hardly have occupied myself 
with them at all this length. I believe that they point to 
something much more interesting. What this is, I can- 
not do more than simply indicate ; but indicate it I will, 
in conclusion, and then leave the student of human nature 
to follow it oat for himself. 

When Mahomet's cousin Jaffer, and others of his first 
converts, persecuted by the idolaters of Mecca, fled in the 
year of our era 615, seven years before the Hegira, into 
Abyssinia, and took refuge with the King of that country, 
the people of Mecca sent after the fugitives to demand 
that they should be given up to them. Abyssinia was 
then already Christian. The king asked Jaffer and his 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 1S9 

companions what was this new religion for which they 
had left their country. Jaffer answered : *' We were 
plunged in the darkness of ignorance, we were worshipers 
of idols. Given over to all our passions, we knew no law 
but that of the strongest, when God raised up among us a 
man of our own race, of noble descent, and long held in 
esteem by us for his virtues. This apostle called us to 
believe in one God, to worship God only, to reject the 
superstitions of our fathers, to despise divinities of wood 
and stone. He commanded us to eschew Avickedness, to 
be truthful in speech, faithful to our engagements, kind 
and helpful to our relations and neighbors. He bade us 
respect the chastity of women, and not to rob the orphan. 
He exhorted us to prayer, alms-giving, and fasting. We 
believed in his mission, and we accepted the doctrines and 
the rule of life which he brought to us from God. For 
this our countrymen have persecuted us ; and now they 
want to make us return to their idolatry. '' The king of 
Abyssinia refused to surrender the fugitives, and then, 
turning again to Jaffer, after a few more explanations, he 
picked up a straw from the ground, and said to him : 
" Between your religion and ours there is not the thick- 
ness of this straw difference."" 

That is not quite so ; yet thus much we may affirm, 
that Jaffer's account of the religion of Mahomet is a great 
deal truer than the accounts of it which are commonly 
current amongst us. Indeed, for the credit of humanity, 
as more than a hundred millions of men are said to profess 
the Mahometan religion, one' is glad to think so. To 
popular opinion everywhere, religion is proved by miracles. 
All religions but a man's own are utterly false and vain ; 
the authors of them are mere impostors ; and the miracles 
which are said to attest them, fictitious. We forget that 
this is a game which two can play at ; although the be- 
liever of each religion always imagines the prodigies which 
attest his own religion to be fenced by a guard granted to 
them alone. Yet how much more safe is it, as well as 
more fruitful, to look for the main confirmation of a re- 
ligion in its intrinsic correspondence with urgent wants of 



190 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Imman nature, in its profound necessity ! Differing 
religions will then be found to have much in common, but 
this will be an additional proof of the value of that religion 
which does most for that which is thus commonly recog- 
nized as salutary and necessary. In Christendom one 
need not go about to establish that the religion of the 
Hebrews is a better religion than the religion of the Arabs, 
or that the Bible is a greater book than the Koran. The 
Bible greiUy the Koran teas made ; there lies the immense 
difference in depth and truth between them ! This very 
inferiority may make the Koran, for certain purposes and 
for people at a low stage of mental growth, a more power- 
ful instrument than the Bible. From the circumstances 
of its origin, the Koran has the intensely dognn^tic charac- 
ter, it has the perpetual insistence on the motive of future 
rewards and punishments, the palpable exhibition of para- 
dise and hell, which the Bible has not. Among the little 
known and little advanced races of the great African con- 
tinent, the Mahometan missionaries, by reason of the sort 
of power which this character of the Koran gives, are said 
to be more successful than ours. Nevertheless even in 
Africa it will assuredly one day be manifest, that whereas 
the Bible-people trace themselves to Abraham through 
Isaac, and the Koran-people trace themselves to Abraham 
through Ishmael, the difference between the religion of 
the Bible and the religion of the Koran is almost as the 
difference between Isaac and Ishmael. I mean that the 
seriousness about righteousness, which is what the hatred 
of idolatry really means, and the profound and inex- 
haustible doctrines that the righteous Eternal loveth 
righteousness, that there is no peace for the wicked, that 
the righteous is an everlasting foundation, are exhibited 
and inculcated in the Old Testament with an authority, 
majesty, and truth which leave the Koran immeasurably 
behind, and which, the more mankind grows and gains 
light, the more will be felt to have no fellows. Mahomet 
was no doubt acquainted with the Jews and their docu- 
ments, and gained something from this source for his 
religion. But his religion is not a mere plagiarism from 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 191 

Jndea, any more than it is a mere mass of falsehood. No ; 
in the seriousness, elevation, and moral energy of himself 
and of that Semitic race from which he sprang and to 
which he spoke, Mahomet mainly found that scorn and 
hatred of idolatry, that sense of the worth and truth of 
righteousness, judgment, and justice, which make the 
real greatness of him and his Koran, and which are thus 
rather an independent testimony to the essential doctrines 
of the Old Testament, than a plagiarism from them. 
The world needs righteousness, and the Bible is the grand 
teacher of it, but for certain times and certain men Ma- 
homet too, in his way, was a teacher of righteousness. 

But we know how the Old Testament conception of 
righteousness ceased with time to have the freshness and 
force of an intuition, became something petrified, narrow, 
and formal, needed renewing. We know how Christianity 
renewed it, carrying into these hard waters of Judaism a 
sort of warm gulf-stream of tender emotion, due chiefly to 
qualities which may be summed up as those of inwardness, 
mildness, and self-renouncement. Mahometanism had no 
such renewing. It began with a conception of righteous- 
ness, lofty indeed, but narrow, and which we may call old 
Jewish ; and there it remained. It is not a feeling re- 
ligion. No one would say that the virtues of gentleness, 
mildness, and self-sacrifice were its virtues ; and the more 
it went on, the more the faults of its original narrow basis 
became visible, more and more it became fierce and mili- 
tant, less and less was it amiable. Now, what are Ali, 
and Hassan, and Hussein and the Imams, but an insur- 
rection of noble and pious natures against this hardness 
and aridity of the religion round them ? an insurrection 
making its authors seem weak, helpless, and unsuccessful 
to the world and amidst the struggles of the world, but 
enabling them to know the joy and peace for which the 
world thirsts in vain, and inspiring in the heart of man- 
kind an irresistible sympathy. "The twelve Imams," 
says Gibbon, *^ Ali, Hassan, Hussein, and the lineal de- 
scendants of Hussein, to the ninth generation, without 
arms, or treasures, or subjects, successively enjoyed the 



192 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

veneration of the people. Their names were often the 
pretense of sedition and civil war ; but these royal saints 
despised the pomp of the world, submitted to the will of 
God and the injustice of man, and devoted their innocent 
lives to the study and practice of religion/' 

Abnegation and mildness, based on the depth of the 
inner life, and visited by unmerited misfortune, made the 
X^ower of the first and famous Imams, Ali, Hassan, and 
Hussein, over the popular imagination. " brother," 
said Hassan, as he was dying of poison, to Hussein who 
sought to find out and punish his murderer, ^^ brother, 
let him alone till he and I meet together before God ! " 
So his father Ali had stood back from his rights instead of 
snatching at them. So of Hussein himself it was said by 
his successful rival, the usurping Caliph Yezid : ^' God 
loved Hussein, hut he would not suffer Mm to attain to 
anything." They might attain to nothing, they were too 
pure, these great ones of the world as by birth they were ; 
but the people, which itself also can attain to so little, 
loved them all the better on that account, loved them for 
their abnegation and mildness, felt that they were dear to 
God, that God loved them, and that they and their lives 
filled a void in the severe religion of Mahomet. These 
saintly self-deniers, these resigned sufferers, who would 
not strive nor cry, supplied a tender and pathetic side in 
Islam. The conquered Persians, a more mobile, more im- 
pressionable, and gentler race than their concentrated, 
narrow, and austere Semitic conquerors, felt the need of it 
most, and gave most prominence to the ideals which satis- 
fied the need ; but in Arabs and Turks also, and in all the 
Mahometan world, Ali and his sons excite enthusiasm and 
affection. Round the central sufferer, Hussein, has come 
to group itself everything which is most tender and touch- 
ing. His person brings to the Mussulman's mind the 
most human side of Mahomet himself, his fondness for 
children, — for Mahomet had loved to nurse the little 
Hussein on his knee, and to show him from the pulpit to 
his people. The Family of the Tent is full of women 
and children, and their devotion and sufferings, — blame- 



A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 193 

less and saintly women, lovely and innocent children. 
There, too, are lovers with their story, the beauty and the 
love of youth ; and all follow the attraction of the pure 
and resigned Imam, all die for him. The tender pathos 
from all these flows into the pathos from him and en- 
hances it, until finally there arises for the poj)ular imagi- 
nation an immense ideal of mildness and self-sacrifice, 
melting and overpowering the soul. 

Even for us, to whom almost all the names are strange, 
whose interest in the places and persons is faint, who have 
them before us for a moment to-day, to see them again, 
probably, no more forever, — even for us, unless I err 
greatly, the power and pathos of this ideal are recogniz- 
able. "What must they be for those to whom every name 
is familiar, and calls up the most solemn and cherished 
associations ; who have had their adoring gaze fixed all 
their lives upon this exemplar of self-denial and gentle- 
ness, and who have no other ? If it was superfluous to 
say to English people that the religion of the Koran has 
not the value of the religion of the Old Testament, still 
more is it superfluous to say that the religion of the Imams 
has not the value of Christianity. The character and 
discourse of Jesus Christ possess, I have elsewhere often 
said, two signal powers : mildness and sweet reasonable- 
ness. The latter, the power which so puts before our view 
duty of every kind as to give it the force of an intuition, 
as to make it seem, — to make the total sacrifice of our 
ordinary self seem, — the most simple, natural, winning, 
necessary thing in the world, has been hitherto applied 
with but a very limited range, it is destined to an infinitely 
wider application, and has a fruitfulness which will yet 
transform the world. Of this the Imams have notliing, 
except so far as all mildness and self-sacrifice have in them 
something of sweet reasonableness and are its indispensa- 
ble preliminary. This they have, mildness a7id self-sacri- 
fice ; and we have seen what an attraction it exercises. 
Could we ask for a stronger testimony to Christianity ? 
Could we wish for any sign more convincing, that Jesns 
Christ was indeed, what Christians call him, the desire of 
13 



194 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

all 7iatmis 9 So salutary, so necessary is what Christianity 
contains, that a religion, — a great, powerful, successful 
religion, — arises without it, and the missing virtue forces 
its way in ! Christianity may say to these Persian Ma- 
hometans, with their gaze fondly turned towards the mar- 
tyred Imams, what in our Bible God says by Isaiah to 
Cyrus, their great ancestor : — '^ I girded thee, though thou 
hast not Jcjioivn 7}ie." It is a long way from Kerbela to 
Calvary ; but the sufferers of Kerbela hold aloft to the 
eyes of millions of our race the lesson so loved by the suf- 
ferer of Calvary. For he said : '^ Learn of me, that I am 
mild, and loiuly of heart j and ye shall find rest unto your 



VIII. 

JOUBERT. 

Why should we ever treat of any dead authors but the 
famous ones ? Mainly for this reason : because, from 
these famous personages, home or foreign, whom we all 
know so well, and of whom so much has been said, the 
amount of stimulus which they contain for us has been in 
a great measure disengaged ; people have formed their 
opinion about them, and do not readily change it. One 
may write of them afresh, combat received opinions about 
them, even interest one's readers in so doing ; but the in- 
terest one's readers receive has to do, in general, rather 
with the treatment than with the subject ; they are 
susceptible of a lively impression rather of the course of 
the discussion itself, — its turns, vivacity, and novelty, — 
than of the genius of the author who is the occasion of it. 
And yet what is really precious and inspiring, in all that 
we get from literature, except this sense of an immediate 
contact with genius itself, and the stimulus towards what 
is true and excellent which' we derive from it ? Now in 
literature, besides the eminent men of genius who have 
had their deserts in the way of fame, besides the eminent 
men of ability who have often had far more than their 
deserts in the way of fame, there are a certain number of 
personages who have been real men of genius, — by which 
I mean, that they have had a genuine gift for what is true 
and excellent, and are therefore capable of emitting a 
life-giving stimulus, — but who, for some reason or other, 
in most cases for very valid reasons, have remained obscure, 
nay, beyond a narrow circle in their own country, un- 

19s 



196 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

known. It is salutary from time to time to come across 
a genius of this kind, and to extract his honey. Often he 
has more of it for us, as I have already said, than greater 
men ; for, though it is by no means true that from 
what is new to us there is most to be learnt, it is yet 
indisputably true that from what is new to us we in gen- 
eral learn most. 

Of a genius of this kind, Joseph Joubert, I am now 
going to speak. His name is, I believe, almost unknown 
in England ; and even in France, his native country, it is 
not famous. M. Sainte-Beuve has given of him one of 
his incomparable portraits ; but, — besides that even M. 
Sainte-Beuve's writings are far less known amongst us 
than they deserve to be, — every country has its own point 
of view from which a remarkable author may most profit- 
ably be seen and studied. 

Joseph Joubert was born (and his date should be re- 
marked) in 1754, at Montignac, a little town in Perigord. 
His father was a doctor with small means and a large 
family ; and Joseph, the eldest, had his own way to make in 
the world. He was for eight years, as pupil first, and 
afterwards as an assistant-master, in the public school of 
Toulouse, then managed by the Jesuits, who seem to have 
left in him a most favorable opinion, not only of their 
tact and address, but of their really good qualities as 
teachers and directors. Compelled by the weakness of 
his health to give up, at twenty-two, the profession of 
teaching, he passed two important years of his life in hard 
study, at home at Montignac ; and' came in 1778 to try 
his fortune in the literary world of Paris, then perhaps 
the most tempting field which has ever yet presented itself 
to a young man of letters. He knew Diderot, D'Alembert, 
Marmontel, Laharpe ; he became intimate with one of 
the celebrities of the next literary generation, then, like 
himself, a young man, — Cliateaubriand's friend, the 
future Grand Master of the University, Fontanes. But, 
even then, it began to be remarked of him, that M. 
Joubert '^s'lnquietait de perfection Me?iplus que de gloire 
— cared far more about perfecting himself than about 



JOUBERT. 197 

making himself a reputation." His severity of morals may 
perhaps have been rendered easier to him by the delicacy of 
his health ; but the delicacy of his health will not by 
itself account for his changeless preference of being to 
seeming, knowing to showing, studying to publishing ; 
for what terrible public performers have some invalids 
been ! This preference he retained all through his life, 
and it is by this that he is characterized. '' He has 
chosen/' Chateaubriand (adopting Epicurus's famous 
words) said of him, " to liide Ms life." Of a life which 
its owner was bent on hiding there can be but little to tell. 
Yet the only two public incidents of Joubert's life, slight 
as they are, do all concerned in them so much credit that 
they deserve mention. In 1790 the Constituent Assembly 
made the office of justice of the peace elective throughout 
France. The people of Montignac retained such an im- 
pression of the character of their young townsman, — one 
of Plutarch's men of virtue, as he had lived amongst 
them, simple, studious, severe, — that, though he had left 
them for years, they elected him in his absence without 
his knowing anything about it. The appointment little 
suited Joubert's wishes or tastes; but at such a moment- 
he thought it wrong to decline it. He held it for two 
years, the legal term, discharging its duties with a firm- 
ness and integrity which were long remembered ; and 
then, when he went out of office, his fellow-townsmen 
reelected him. But Joubert thought that he had now ac- 
complished his duty towards them, and he went back to 
the retirement which he loved. That seems to me a 
little episode of the great French Eevolution worth re- 
membering. The sage who was asked by the king, why 
sages were seen at the doors of kings, but not kings at the 
doors of sages, replied, that it was because sages knew 
what was good for them, and kings did not. But at Mon- 
tignac the king — for in 1790 the people in France was 
king with a vengeance — knew what was good for him, and 
came to the door of the sage. 

The other incident was this. When Napoleon, in 1809, 
reorganized the public instruction of France, founded the 



198 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

University, and made M. de Fontanes its Grand Master, 
Fontanes had to submit to the Em^Deror a list of persons 
to form the council or governing body of the new Univer- 
sity. Third on his list, after two distinguished names, 
Fontanes placed the unknown name of Joubert. ^' This 
name," he said in his accompanying memorandum to the 
Emperor, " is not known as the two first are ; and yet 
this is the nomination to which I attach most importance. 
I have known M. Joubert all my life. His character and 
intelligence are of the very highest order. I shall rejoice 
if your Majesty will accept my guarantee for him." 
Napoleon trusted his Grand Master, and Joubert became 
a councilor of the University. It is something that a 
man, elevated to the highest posts of State, should not 
forget his obscure friends ; or that, if he remembers and 
places them, he should regard in placing them their merit 
rather than their obscurity. It is more, in the eyes of 
those whom the necessities, real or supposed, of a politi- 
cal system have long familiarized with sucli cynical dis- 
regard of fitness in the distribution of office, to see a min- 
ister and his master alike zealous, in giving away places, 
to give them to the best men to be found. 

Between 1792 and 1809 Joubert had married. His life 
was passed between Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where his 
wife's family lived, — a pretty little Burgundian town, by 
which the Lyons railroad now passes, — and Paris. Here, 
in a house in the Rue St.-Honore, in a room very high up, 
and admitting plenty of the light which he so loved, — a 
room from whicli he saw, in his own words, '^ a great deal 
of sky and very little earth," — among the treasures of a 
library collected with infinite pains, taste, and skill, from 
which every book bethought ill of was rigidly excluded, — 
he never would possess either a complete Voltaire or a 
complete Rousseau, — the happiest hours of his life were 
passed. In the circle of one of those women who leave a 
sort of perfume in literary history, and who have the gift 
of inspiring successive generations of readers with an in- 
describable regret not to have known them, — Pauline de 
Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont, — he had become in- 



JOUBERT. 199 

timate with nearly all which at that time, in the Paris 
world of letters or of society, was most attractive and 
promising. Amongst his acquaintances one only misses 
the names of Madame de Stael and Benjamin Constant. 
Neither of them was to his taste, and with Madame de Stael 
he always refused to become acquainted ; he thought she 
had more vehemence than truth, and more heat than light. 
Years went on, and his friends became conspicuous 
authors or statesmen ; but Joubert remained in the shade. 
His constitution was of such fragility that how he lived so 
long, or accomplished so much as he did, is a wonder : 
his soul had, for its basis of operations, hardly any body 
at all : both from his stomach and from his chest he 
seems to have had constant suffering, though he lived by 
rule, and was as abstemious as a Hindoo. Often, after 
overwork in thinking, reading, or talking, he remained for 
days together in a state of utter prostration, — condemned 
to absolute silence and inaction ; too happy if the agitation 
of his mind would become quiet also, and let him have the 
repose of which he stood in so much need. With this 
weakness of health, these repeated suspensions of energy, 
he was incapable of the prolonged contention of spirit 
necessary for the creation of great works. But he read 
and thought immensely ; he was an unwearied note-taker, 
a charming letter-writer ; above all, an excellent and 
delightful talker. The gaiety and amenity of his natural 
disposition were inexhaustible ; and his spirit, too, was of 
astonishing elasticity ; he seemed to hold on to life by a 
single thread only, but that single thread was very tena- 
cious. More and more, as his soul and knowledge ripened 
more and more, his friends pressed to his room in the Rue 
St.-Honore ; often he received them in bed, for he seldom 
rose before three o'clock in the afternoon ; and at his bed- 
room-door, on his bad days, Madame Joubert stood sentry, 
trying, not always with success, to keep back the thirsty 
comers from the fonntain which was forbidden to flow. 
Fontanes did nothing in the University without consult- 
ing him, and Joubert's ideas and pen were always at his 
friend's service. 



200 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

When he was in the country, at Villeneuve, the young 
priests of his neighborhood used to resort to him, in order to 
jorofit by his library and by his conversation. He, like our 
Coleridge, was particularly qualified to attract men of this 
kind and to benefit them : retaining perfect independence 
of mind, he was a religious philosopher. As age came on, 
his infirmities became more and more overwhelming ; some 
of his friends, too, died ; others became so immersed in 
politics, that Joubert, who hated politics, saw them sel- 
domer than of old ; but the moroseness of age and in- 
firmity never touched him, and he never quarreled with a 
friend or lost one. From these miseries he was preserved 
by that quality in him of which I have already spoken ; a 
quality which is best expressed by a word, not of common 
use in English, — alas, we have too little in our national 
character of the quality which this word expresses, — his 
inborn, his constant amenity. He lived till the year 1824. 
On the 4th of May in that year he died, at the age of 
seventy. A day or two after his death M. de Chateau- 
briand inserted in tlie Journal des Dehats a short notice 
of him, perfect for its feeling, grace, and propriety. On 
ne vit dans la memoire du monde, he says and says truly, 
que par des travaux pour le monde, — ^'a man can live in 
the world's memory only by what he has done for the world. '^ 
But Chateaubriand used the privilege which his great 
name gave him to assert, delicately but firmly, Joubert's 
real and rare merits, and to tell the world what manner of 
man had just left it. 

Joubert's papers were accumulated in boxes and drawers. 
He had not meant them for publication ; it was very dif- 
ficult to sort them and to prepare them for it. Madame 
Joubert, his widow, had a scruple about giving them a 
publicity which her husband, she felt, would never have 
permitted. But, as her own end approached, the natural 
desire to leave of so remarkable a spirit some enduring 
memorial, some memorial to outlast the admiring recol- 
lection of the living who were so fast passing away, made 
her yield to the entreaties of his friends, and allow the 
printing, but for private circulation only, of a volume of 



JOUBERT, 201 

his fragments. Chateaubriand edited it ; it appeared in 
1838, fourteen years after Joubert's death. The volume 
attracted the attention of those who were best fitted to 
appreciate it, and profoundly impressed them. M. Sainte- 
Beuve gave of it, in the Revue cles Deux Mondes, the 
admirable notice of vv^hich I have already spoken ; and so 
much curiosity was excited about Joubert, that the col- 
lection of his fragments, enlarged by many additions, was 
at last published for the benefit of the world in general. 
It has since been twice reprinted. The first or preliminary 
chapter has some fancifulness and affectation in it ; the 
reader should begin with the second. 

I have likened Joubert to Coleridge ; and indeed the 
points of resemblance between the two men are numerous. 
Both of them great and celebrated talkers, Joubert attract- 
ing pilgrims to his upper chamber in the Rue St.-Honore, 
as Coleridge attracted pilgrims to Mr. Oilman's at High- 
gate ; both of them desultory and incomplete writers, — 
here they had an outward likeness with one another. 
Both of them passionately devoted to reading in a class of 
books, and to thinking on a class of subjects, out of the 
beaten line of the reading and thought of their day ; both 
of them ardent students and critics of old literature, poetry, 
and the metaphysics of religion ; both of them curious ex- 
plorers of words, and of the latent significance hidden 
under the popular use of them ; both of them, in a certain 
sense, conservative in religion and politics, by antipathy 
to the narrow and shallow foolishness of vulgar modern 
liberalism ; — here they had their inward and real likeness. 
But that in which the essence of their likeness consisted 
is this, — that they both had from nature an ardent impulse 
for seeking the genuine truth on all matters they thought 
about, and a gift for finding it and recognizing it when it 
was found. To have the impulse for seeking this truth is 
much rarer than most people think ; to have the gift for 
finding it is, I need not say, very rare indeed. By this 
they have a spiritual relationship of the closest kind with 
one another, and they become, each of them, a source of 
stimulus and progress for all of us. 



202 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Coleridge had less delicacy and penetration than Joubert, 
but more richness and power ; his production, though far 
inferior to what his nature at first seemed to promise, was 
abundant and varied. Yet in all his production how much 
is there to dissatisfy us I How many reserves must be 
made in praising either his poetry, or his criticism, or his 
philosophy ! How little either of his poetry, or of his 
criticism, or of his philosophy, can we expect permanently 
to stand ! But that which will stand of Coleridge is this : 
the stimulus of his continual effort, — not a moral effort, 
for he had no morals, — but of his continual instinctive 
effort, crowned often with rich success, to get at and to 
lay bare the real truth of his matter in hand, whether that 
matter were literary, or philosophical, or political, or re- 
ligious ; and this in a country where at that moment such 
an effort was almost unknown ; where the most powerful 
minds threw themselves upon poetry, which conveys truth, 
indeed, but conveys it indirectly ; and where ordinary 
minds were so habituated to do without thinking altogether, 
to regard considerations of established routine and prac- 
tical convenience as paramount, that any attempt to intro- 
duce within the domain of these the disturbing element 
of thought, they were prompt to resent as an outrage. 
Coleridge's great usefulness lay in his supplying in England, 
for many years and under critical circumstances, by the 
spectacle of this effort of his, a stimulus to all minds 
capable of profiting by it ; in the generation which grew 
up around him. His action will still be felt as long as 
the need for it continues. When, with the cessation of 
the need, the action too has ceased, Coleridge's memory, 
in spite of the disesteem — nay, repugnance— which his 
character may and must inspire, will yet forever remain 
invested with that interest and gratitude which invests 
the memory of founders. 

M. de Remusat, indeed, reproaches Coleridge with his 
jugements saugrenus ; the criticism of a gifted truth-finder 
ought not to be saugrenu, so on this reproach we must 
pause for a moment. Saugrenu is a rather vulgar French 
word, but, like many other vulgar words, very expressive ; 



JOUBERT. 203 

used as an epithet for a judgment, it means something 
like impiidentli) absurd. The literary judgments of 
one nation about another are very apt to be saugrenus. 
It is certainly true, as M. Sainte-Beuve remarks in answer 
to Goethe's complaint against the French that they have 
undervalued Du Bartas, that as to the estimate of its own 
authors every nation is the best judge ; the positive esti- 
mate of them, be it understood, not, of course, the 
estimate of them in comparison with the authors of 
other nations. Therefore a foreigner's judgments about 
the intrinsic merit of a nation's authors will generally, 
when at complete variance with that nation's own be 
wrong ; but there is a permissible wrongness in these 
matters, and to that permissible wrongness there is a 
limit. When that limit is exceeded, the wrong judgment 
becomes more than wrong, it becomes saugremt, or im- 
pudently absurd. For instance, the high estimate which 
the French have of Eacine is probably in great measure 
deserved ; or, to take a yet stronger case, even the high 
estimate which Joubert had of the Abbe Delille is prob- 
ably in great measure deserved ; but the common dispar- 
aging judgment passed on Eacine by English readers is 
not saugrenu, still less is that passed by them on tha 
Abbe Delille smigreiiu, because the beauty of Eacine, 
and of Delille too, so far as Delille's beauty goes, is 
eminently in their language, and this is a beauty which 
a foreigner cannot perfectly seize ; — this beauty of dic- 
tion, apicibiis verlorum ligata, as M. Sainte-Beuve, quot- 
ing Quintilian, says of Chateaubriand's. As to Chateau- 
briand himself, again, the common English judgment, 
which stamps him as a mere shallow rhetorician, all froth 
and vanity, is certainly wrong, one may even wonder 
that we English should judge Chateaubriand so wrongly, 
for his power goes far beyond beauty of diction ; it 
is a power, as well, of passion and sentiment, and this 
sort of power the English can perfectly well appreciate. 
One production of Chateaubriand's, Rene, is akin to the 
most popular productions of Byron, — to the Childe 
Harold or Manfred, — in spirit, equal to them in power. 



204 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

superior to tliem in form. But this work, I hardly know 
why, is almost unread in England. And only consider 
this criticism of Chateaubriand's on the true pathetic ! 
" It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many 
other dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that 
the best works of imagination are those which draw 
most tears. One could name this or that melodrama, 
which no one would like to own having written, and 
which yet harrows the feelings far more than the ^neid. 
The true tears are those which are called forth by the 
heauty of poetry ; there must be as much admiration in 
them as sorrow. They are the tears which come to our 
eyes when Priam says to Achilles, stX-tj'^ 8\ uT ovtko . . . 
— ' And I have endured, — the like whereof no soul upon 
the earth hath yet endured, — to carry to my lips the hand 
of him who slew my child ; ' or when Joseph cries out : ^ I 
am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.'" 
WIio does not feel that the man who wrote that was no 
shallow rhetorician, but a born man of genius, with the 
true instinct of genius for what is really admirable ? Nay, 
take these words of Chateaubriand, an old nran of eighty, 
dying, amidst the noise and bustle of the ignoble revolu- 
tion of February 1848 : '^ Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quand 
done, quand done serai-je delivre de tout ce monde, ce 
bruit ; quand done, quand done cela finira-t-il ? " Who, 
with any ear, does not feel that those are not the accents 
of a trumpery rhetorician, but of a rich and puissant nature, 
— the cry of the dying lion ? I repeat it, Chateaubriand 
is most ignorantly underrated in England ; and we Eng- 
lish are capable of rating him far more correctly if we 
knew him better. Still Chateaubriand has such real and 
great faults, he falls so decidedly beneath the rank of the 
truly greatest authors, that the depreciatory judgment 
passed on him in England, though ignorant and wrong, 
can hardly be said to transgress the limits of permissible 
ignorance ; it is not a jiigemeyit saugr^enu. But when a 
critic denies genius to a literature which has produced 
Bossuet and Moliere, he passes the bounds ; and Cole- 
ridge's judgments on French literature and the French 



JOUBERT. 205 

genius are undoubtedly, as M. de Remusat calls them, 
saugreyius. 

And yet, such is the impetuosity of our poor human 
nature, such its proneness to rush to a decision with im- 
perfect knowledge, that his having delivered a miigrenu 
judgment or two in his life by no means proves a man not 
to have had, in comparison with his fellow-men in general, 
a remarkable gift for truth, or disqualifies him for being, 
by virtue of that gift, a source of vital stimulus for us. 
Joubert had far less smoke and turbid vehemence in him 
than Coleridge ; he had also a far keener sense of what was 
absurd. But Joubert can write to M. Mole (the M. Mole 
who was afterwards Louis Philippe's well-known minister) : 
'' As to your Milton, whom the merit of the Abbe Delille " 
(the Abb^ Delille translated Paradise Lost) *^ makes me 
admire, and with whom I have nevertheless still plenty of 
fault to find, why, I should like to know, are you scandal- 
ized that I have not enabled myself to read him ? I don't 
understand the language in which he writes, and I don't 
much care to. If he is a poet one cannot put up with, 
even in the prose of the younger Racine, am I to blame 
for that ? If by force you mean beauty manifesting it- 
self with power, I maintain that the Abbe Delille has more 
force than Milton." That, to be sure, is a petulant out- 
burst in a private letter ; it is not, like Coleridge's, a de- 
liberate jiroposition in a printed philosophical essay. But 
is it possible to imagine a more perfect specimen of a sau- 
grenu judgment ? It is even worse than Coleridge's, 
because it is saugremi with reasons. That, however, does 
not prevent Joubert from having been really a man of 
extraordinary ardor in the search for truth, and of ex- 
traordinary fineness in the perception of it ; and so was 
Coleridge. 

Joubert had around him in France an atmosphere of 
literary, philosophical, and religious opinion as alien to 
him as that in England was to Coleridge. This is what 
makes Joubert, too, so remarkable, and it is on this ac- 
count that I begged the reader to remark his date. He 
was born in 1754 ; he died in 1824. He was thus in the 



206 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

fulness of his powers at the beginning of the present cen- 
tury, at the epoch of Napoleon's consulate. The French 
criticism of that day — the criticism of Laharpe's suc- 
cessors, of Geoffrey and his colleagues in the Joiirnal des 
Delats — had a dryness very unlike the telling vivacity of 
the early Edinburgh reviewers, their contemporaries, 
but a fundamental narrowness, a want of genuine insight, 
much on a par with theirs. Joubert, like Coleridge, has 
no respect for the dominant oracle ; he treats his Geoff roy 
with about as little deference as Coleridge treats his 
Jeffrey. " Geoffrey," he says in an article in the Journal 
des Delats criticising Chateaubriand's Genie dii Cliristia- 
nisme — '' Geoffrey in this article begins by holding out his 
paw prettily enough ; but he ends by a volley of kicks, 
which lets the whole world see but too clearly the four 
iron shoes of the four-footed animal." There is, however, 
in France a sympathy with intellectual activity for its own 
sake, and for the sake of its inherent pleasurableness and 
beanty, keener than any which exists in England ; and 
Joubert had more effect in Paris, — though his conversa- 
tion was his only weapon, and Coleridge wielded besides 
his conversation his pen, — than Coleridge had or could 
have in London. I mean, a more immediate, appreciable 
effect ; an effect not only upon the young and enthusiastic, 
to whom the future belongs, but upon formed and impor- 
tant personages to whom the present belongs, and who are 
actually moving society. He owed this partly to his real 
advantages over Coleridge. If he had, as I have already 
said, less power and richness than his English parallel, he 
had more tact and penetration. He was more jjossiMe 
than Coleridge ; his doctrine was more intelligible than 
Coleridge's, more receivable. And yet with Joubert, the 
striving after a consummate and attractive clearness of 
expression came from no mere frivolous dislike of labor 
and inability for going deep, but was a part of his native 
love of truth and perfection. The delight of his life he 
found in truth, and in the satisfaction which the enjoying 
of truth gives to the spirit ; and he thought the truth was 
never really and worthily said, so long as the least cloud. 



JOUBERT. 



207 



clnmsiness, and repulsiveness hung about the expression 
of it. 

Some of his best passages are those in which he upholds 
this doctrine. Even metaphysics he would not allow to 
remain difficult and abstract : so long as they spoke a pro- 
fessional jargon, the langaage of the schools, he main- 
tained, — and who shall gainsay him ? — that metaphysics 
were imperfect ; or, at any rate, had not yet reached their 
ideal perfection. 

''The true science of metaphysics/' he says, ''consists 
not in rendering abstract that which is sensible, but in 
rendering sensible that which is abstract ; apparent that 
which is hidden ; imaginable, if so it may be, that which is 
only intelligible ; and intelligible, finally, that which an 
ordinary attention fails to seize." • 

And therefore : — 

" Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which have 
not been able to get currency in the world, and are only 
calculated to form a special language." 

Nor would he suffer common words to be employed in a 
special sense by the schools : — 

" Which is the best, if one wants to be useful and to be 
really understood, to get one's words in the world, or to 
get them in the schools. I maintain that the good plan 
is to employ words in their popular sense rather than in 
their philosophical sense ; and the better plan still, to 
employ them in their natural sense rather than in their 
popular sense. By their natural sense, I mean the popular 
and universal acceptation of them brought to that which in 
this is essential and invariable. To prove a thing by defi- 
nition proves nothing, if the definition is purely philo- 
sophical ; for such definitions only bind him who makes 
them. To prove a thing by definition, when the definition 
expresses the necessary, inevitable, and clear idea which 
the world at large attaches to the object, is, on the con- 
trary, all in all ; because then what one does is simply to 
show people what they do really think, in spite of them- 
selves and without kuowing it. The rule that one is free 
to give to words what sense one will, and that the only 



208 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

thing needful is to be agreed upon the sense one gives 
them, is very well for the mere purposes of argumentation, 
and may be allowed in the schools where this sort of fen- 
cing is to be practised ; but in the sphere of the true-born 
and noble science of metaphysics, and in the genuine world 
of literature, it is good for nothing. One must never quit 
sight of realities, and one must employ one's expressions 
simply as media, — as glasses, through which one's thoughts 
can be best made evident. I know, by my own experience, 
how hard this rule is to follow ; but I judge of its import- 
ance by the failure of every system of metaphysics. Not 
one of them has succeeded ; for the simple reason, that in 
every one ciphers have been constantly used instead of 
values, artificial ideas instead of native ideas, jargon instead 
of idiom." • 

I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever adopt 
Joubert's rules ; but I am sure that the man of letters, 
whenever he has to speak of metaphysics, will do well to 
adopt them. He, at any rate, must remember : — 

" It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold 
of the reader and gets possession of him. It is by means 
of these that great thoughts get currency and pass for 
true metal, like gold and silver which have had a recog- 
nized stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in 
the man who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly 
perceived, uses them ; for people feel that such an em- 
ployment of the language of common human life betokens 
a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who keeps 
himself in contact with them. Besides, these words make 
a style frank and easy. They show that an author has 
long made the thought or the feeling expressed his mental 
food ; that he has so assimilated them and familiarized 
them, that the most common expressions suffice him in 
order to express ideas which have become every-day ideas 
to him by the length of time they have been in his mind. 
And lastly, what one says in such words looks more true ; 
for, of all the words in use, none are so clear as those 
which we call common words ; and clearness is so eminently 
one of the characteristics of truth, that often it even 
passes for truth itself.'' 



JOUBERT. 209 

These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric ; 
they come from his accurate sense of perfection, from his 
having clearly seized the fine and just idea that beauty 
and light are properties of truth, and that truth is incom- 
pletely exhibited if it is exhibited without beauty and 
light :- 

"Be profound with clear terms and not with obscure 
terms. What is difficult will at last become easy ; but as 
one goes deep into things, one must still keep a charm, 
and one must carry into these dark depths of thought, 
into which speculation has only recently penetrated, the 
pure and antique clearness of centuries less learned than 
ours, but with more light in them." 

And elsewhere he speaks of those "spirits, lovers of 
light, who, when they have an idea to put forth, brood 
long over it first, and wait patiently till \i shines, as Buffon 
enjoined, when he defined genius to be the aptitude for 
patience ; spirits who know by experience that the driest 
matter and the dullest words hide within them the germ 
and spark of some brightness, like those fairy nuts in 
which were found diamonds if one broke the shell and was 
the right person ; spirits who maintain that, to see and 
exhibit things in beauty, is to see and show things as in 
their essence they really are, and not as they exist for the 
eye of the careless, who do not look beyond the outside ; 
spirits hard to satisfy, because of a keen-sightedness in 
them, which makes them discern but too clearly both the 
models to be followed and those to be shunned ; spirits 
active though meditative, who cannot rest except in solid 
truths, and whom only beauty can make happy ; spirits 
far less concerned for glory than for perfection, who, be- 
cause their art is long and life is short, often die without 
leaving a monument, having had their own inward sense 
of life and fruitfulness for their best reward.'' 

No doubt there is something a little too ethereal in all 
this, something which reminds one of Joubert's physical 
want of body and substance ; no doubt, if a man wishes 
to be a great author, it is to consider too curiously, to 
consider as Joubert did ; it is a mistake to spend so much 



210 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of one's time in setting up one's ideal standard of perfec- 
tion, and in contemplating it. Joubert himself knew this 
very well : ** I cannot build a house for my ideas," said 
he ; "I have tried to do without words, and words take 
their revenge on me by their difficulty." **If there is a 
man upon earth tormented by the cursed desire to get a 
whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and 
this phrase into one word, — that man is myself." ** I can 
sow, but I cannot build." Joubert, however, makes no 
claim to be a great author ; by renouncing all ambition to 
be this, by not trying to fit his ideas into a house, by 
making no compromise with words in spite of their diffi- 
culty, by being quite single-minded in his pursuit of per- 
fection, perhaps he is enabled to get closer to the truth of 
the objects of his study, and to be of more service to us by 
setting before us ideals, than if he had composed a cele- 
brated work. I doubt whether, in an elaborate work on 
the philosophy of religion, he would have got his ideas 
about religion to shine, to use his own expression, as they 
shine when he utters them in perfect freedom. Penetra- 
tion in these matters is valueless without soul, and soul is 
valueless without penetration ; both of these are delicate 
qualities, and, even in those who have them, easily lost ; 
the charm of Joubert is, that he has and keeps both. 
Let us try and show that he does. 

'* One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry when 
one thinks differently from the poets, and in religion when 
one thinks differently from the saints. 

*^ There is a great difference between taking for idols 
Mahomet and Luther, and bowing down before Eousseau 
and Voltaire. People at any rate imagined they were 
obeying God when they followed Mahomet, and the Scrip- 
tures when they hearkened to Luther. And perhaps one 
ought not too much to disparage that inclination which 
leads mankind to put into the hands of those whom it 
thinks the friends of God the direction and government 
of its heart and mind. It is the subjection to irreligious 
spirits which alone is fat^l, and, in the fullest sense of the 
word, depraving. 



JOUBERT. 211 

•' May I say it ? It is not hard to know God, provided 
one will not force oneself to define him. 

'^ Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that which 
belongs to our innermost feeling. State truths of senti- 
ment, and do not try to prove them. There is a danger 
in such proofs ; for in arguing it is necessary to treat that 
which is in question as something problematic : now that 
which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends 
by appearing to us as really doubtful. In things that are 
visible and palpable, never prove what is believed already ; 
in things that are certain and mysterious, — mysterious by 
their greatness and by their nature, — make people believe 
them, and do not prove them ; in things that are matters 
of practice and duty, command, and do not explain. 
^Fear God,' has made many men pious ; the proofs of the 
existence of God have made many men atheists. From 
the defense springs the attack ; the advocate begets in his 
hearer a wish to pick holes ; and men are almost always 
led on, from the desire to contradict the doctor, to the 
desire to contradict the doctrine. Make truth lovely, and 
do not try to arm her ; mankind will then be far less 
inclined to contend with her. 

'^ Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard by 
the pious with pleasure ? Because he talks to them about 
tuhat they love. But you who have to expound religion to 
children of this world, you who have to speak to them of 
that which they once loved perhaps, or which they would 
be glad to love, — remember that they do not love it yet, 
and to make them love it take heed to speak with power. 

^' You may do what you like, mankind will believe no 
one but God ; and he only can persuade mankind who be- 
lieves that God has spoken to him. 'No one can give faith 
unless he has faith ; the persuaded persuade, as the indul- 
gent disarm. 

^' The only happy people in the world are the good man, 
the sage, and the saint ; but the saint is hap23ier than 
either of the others, so much is man by his nature formed 
for sanctity." 

The same delicacy and penetration which he here shows 



212 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

ill speaking of the inward essence of religion, Jonbert 
shows also in speaking of its outward form, and of its 
manifestation in the world : — 

*' Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of all re- 
ligions. A man has not a religion simply by having pious 
inclinations, any more than he has a country simply by 
having philanthropy. A man has not a country until he 
is a citizen in a state, until he undertakes to follow and 
uphold certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, and to 
adopt certain ways of living and acting. 

" Eeligion is neither a theology nor a theosophy ; it is 
more than all this ; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an in- 
dissoluble engagement.''^ 

Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and beauty 
the good and imposing side of the wealth and splendor of 
the Catholic Church, than Joubert in the following pas- 
sage ? — 

^' The pomps and magnificence with which the Church 
is reproached are in truth the result and the proof of her 
incomparable excellence. From whence, let me ask, have 
come this power of hers and these excessive riches, except 
from the enchantment into which she threw all the world ? 
Eavished with her beauty, millions of men from age to age 
kept loading her with gifts, bequests, cessions. She had 
the talent of making herself loved, and the talent of mak- 
ing men happy. It is that which wrought prodigies for 
her ; it is from thence that she drew her power." 

^' She had the talent of making herself feared,^' — one 
should add that too, in order to be perfectly just ; but 
Joubert, because he is a true child of light, can see that 
the wonderful success of the Catholic Church must have 
been due really to her good rather than to her bad quali- 
ties ; to her making herself loved rather than to her mak- 
ing herself feared. 

How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark on 
the Old and New Testaments : — 

" The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good 
and evil ; the Gospel, on the other hand, seems written 
for the predestinated \. it is the book of innocence. The 



JOUBERT. 213 

one is made for earth, the other seems made for heaven. 
According- as the one or the other of these books takes 
hold of a nation, what may be called the religious humors 
of nations differ." 

So the British and Xorth American Puritans are the 
children of the Old Testament, as Joachim of Flora and 
St. Francis are the children of the Xew. And does not 
the following maxim exactly fit the Church of England, 
of which Joubert certainly never thought when he was 
writing it ? — " The austere sects excite the most enthusi- 
asm at first ; but the temperate sects have always been the 
most durable." 

And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, inter- 
esting in themselves, are still more interesting because 
they touch matters we cannot well know at first-hand, and 
which Joubert, an impartial observer, had had the means 
of studying closely. We are apt' to think of the Jansenists 
as having failed by reason of their merits ; Joubert shows 
us how far their failure was due to their defects : — 

^' We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in Scripture, 
and to pass quickly over what is obscure ; to light up what 
in Scripture is troubled, by what is serene in it ; what 
puzzles and checks the reason, by what satisfies the 
reason. The Jansenists have done just the reverse. They 
lay stress upon what is uncertain, obscure, afflicting, and 
they pass lightly over all the rest ; they eclipse the lumi- 
nous and consoling truths of Scripture, by putting be- 
tween us and them its opaque and dismal truths. For 
example, ^ Many are called ; ' there is a clear truth : ' Few 
are chosen ; ' there is an obscure truth. ' We are children 
of wrath ; ' there is a somber, cloudy, terrifying truth : 
' We are all the children of God -,' 'I came not to call 
the righteous, but sinners to repentance ; ' there are truths 
which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, light. The 
Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed no cheering 
ray on our trouble. They are not, however, to be con- 
demned for what they say, because what they say is true ; 
but they are to be condemned for what they fail to say, 
for that is true too, — truer, even, than the other j that is^ 



214 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

its truth is easier for us to seize, fuller, rounder, and more 
complete. Theology, as the Jansenists exhibit her, has 
but the half of her disk." 

Again : — 

"The Jansenists erect 'grace' into a kind of fourth 
person of the Trinity. They are, without thinking or 
intending it, Quateriiitarians. St. Paul and St. Augus- 
tine, too exclusively studied, have done all the mischief. 
Instead of 'grace,' say help, succor, a divine influence, a 
dew of heaven ; then one can come to a right understand- 
ing. The word ' grace ' is a sort of talisman, all the bane- 
ful spell of which can be broken by translating it. The 
trick of personifying words is a fatal source of mischief in 
theology. '^ 

Once more : — 

''The Jansenists tell men to love God; the Jesuits 
make men love him. The doctrine of these last is full of 
.loosenesses, or, if you will, of errors ; still, — singular as it 
may seem, it is undeniable, — they are the better directors 
of souls, 

" The Jansenists have carried into religion more 
thought than the Jesuits, and they go deeper ; they are 
faster bound with its sacred bonds. They have in their 
way of thinking an austerity which incessantly constrains 
the will to keep the path of duty ; all the habits of their 
understanding, in short, are more Christian. But they 
seem to love God without affection, and solely from 
reason, from duty, from justice. The Jesuits, on the 
other hand, seem to love him from pure inclination ; out 
of admiration, gratitude, tenderness ; for the pleasure of 
loving him, in short. In their books of devotion you find 
joy, because with the Jesuits nature and religion go hand 
in hand. In the books of the Jansenists there is a sadness 
and a moral constraint, because with the Jansenists re- 
ligion is forever trying to put nature in bonds. 

The Jesuits have suffered, and deservedly suffered, 
plenty of discredit from what Joubert gently calls their 
" loosenesses ; " let them have the merit of their amiability. 

The most characteristic thoughts one can quote from 



JOUBERT. 215 

any writer are always his thoughts on matters like these ; 
but the maxims of Joubert are purely literary subjects 
also, have the same purged and subtle delicacy ; they 
show the same sedulousness in him to preserve perfectly 
true the balance of his soul. Let me begin with this, 
which contains a truth too many people fail to perceive : — 

^' Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates the 
crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of the first 
order." 

And here is another sentence, worthy of Goethe, to 
clear the air at one's entrance into the region of liter- 
ature : — 

^^ With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the pas- 
sions, the weakness of the spirit ; with the storms of the 
passing time and with the great scourges of human life, — 
hunger, thirst, dishonor, diseases, and death, — authors 
may as long as they like go on making novels which shall 
harrow our hearts ; but the soul says all the while, ' You 
hurt me.'" 

And again : — 
^ " Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more 
beautiful than reality. Certainly the monstrosities of 
fiction may be found in the booksellers' shops ; you buy 
them there for a certain number of francs, and you talk 
of them for a certain number of days ; but they have no 
place in literature, because in literature the one aim of 
art is the beautiful. Once lose sight of that, and you 
have the mere frightful reality." 

That is just the right criticism to pass on these "mon- 
strosities :" they have no place m Uteratu7^e, and those who 
produce them are not really men of letters. One would 
think that this was enough to deter from such production 
any man of genuine ambition. But most of us, alas ! are 
what we must be, not what we ought to be, — not even 
what we know we ought to be. 

The following, of which the first part reminds one of 
"Wordsworth's sonnet, " If thou indeed derive thy light 
from heaven," excellently defines the true salutary function 
of literature, and the limits of this function : — 



216 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

''^ Whether one is an eagle or an ant, in the intellectual 
world, seems to me not to matter much ; tjie essential 
thing is to have one's place marked there, one's station 
assigned, and to belong decidedly to a regular and whole- 
some order. A small talent, if it keeps within its limits 
and rightfully fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well 
as a greater one. To accustom mankind to pleasures 
which depend neither upon the bodily appetites nor upon 
money, by giving them a taste for the things of the mind, 
seems to me, in fact, the one proper fruit which nature 
has meant our literary productions to have. When they 
have other fruits, it is by accident, and, in general, not for 
good. Books which absorb our attention to such a degree 
that they rob us of all fancy for other books, are absolutely 
pernicious. In this way they only bring fresh crotchets 
and sects into the world ; they multiply the great variety 
of weights, rules, and measures already existing ; they are 
morally and politically a nuisance." 

Who can read these words and not think of the limiting 
effect exercised by certain works in certain spheres and 
for certain periods ; exercised even by the works of men 
of genius or virtue, — by the works of Eousseau, the works 
of Wesley, the works of Swedenborg ? And what is it 
which makes the Bible so admirable a book, to be the one 
book of those who can have only one, but the miscellaneous 
character of the contents of the Bible ? 

Joubert was all his life a passionate lover of Plato ; I 
hope other lovers of Plato will forgive me for saying that 
their adored object has never been more truly described 
than he is here : — 

"Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness with 
him ; he puts light into our eyes, and fills us with a clear- 
ness by which all objects afterwards become illuminated. 
He teaches us nothing ; but he prepares us, fashions us, 
and makes us ready to know all. Somehow or other, the 
habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for 
discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may 
afterwards present themselves. Like mountain-air, it 
sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for whole- 
some food.'' 



JOUBERT. 217 

" Plato loses himself in the void " (he says again) ; 
'* but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their 
rustle." And the conclusion is : "It is good to breathe 
his air, but not to live upon him/' 

As a pendant to the criticism on Plato, this on the 
French moralist Nicole is excellent : — 

" Nicole is a Pascal without style. It is not what he 
says which is sublime, but what he thinks ; he rises, not 
by the natural elevation of his own spirit, but by that of 
his doctrines. One must not look to the form in him, but 
to the matter, which is exquisite. He ought to be read 
with a direct view of practice." 

English people have hardly ears to hear the praises of 
Bossuet, and the Bossuet of Joubert is Bossuet at his very 
best ; but this is a far truer Bossuet than the " declaimer " 
Bossuet of Lord Macaulay, himself a born rhetorician, if 
ever there was one : — 

*' Bossuet emjDloys all our idioms, as Homer employed 
all the dialects. The language of kings, of statesmen, and 
of warriors ; the language of the people and of the stu- 
dent, of the country and of the schools, of the sanctuary 
and of the courts of law ; the old and the new, the trivial 
and the stately, the quiet and the resounding, — he turns 
all to his use ; and out of all this he makes a style, simple, 
grave, majestic. His ideas are, like his words, varied, — 
common and sublime together. Times and doctrines in 
all their multitude were ever before his spirit, as things 
and words in all their multitude were ever before it. He 
is not so much a man as a human nature, with the tem- 
perance of a saint, the justice of a bishop, the prudence of 
a doctor, and the might of a great spirit." 

After this on Bossuet, I must quote a criticism on 
Kacine, to show that Joubert did not indiscriminately 
worship all the French gods of the grand century : — 

" Those who find Racine enough for them are poor 
souls and poor wits ; they are souls and wits which have 
never got beyond the callow and boarding-school stage. 
Admirable, as no doubt he is, for his skill in having made 
poetical the most humdrum sentiments and the most 



218 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

middling sort of passions, he can yet stand ns in stead of 
nobody but himself. He is a superior writer ; and, in litera- 
ture, that at once puts a man on a pinnacle. But he is not 
an inimitable writer." 

And again : ^' The talent of Eacine is in his works, but 
Racine himself is not there. That is why he himself 
became disgusted with them." '^ Of Racine, as of his 
ancients, the genius lay in taste. His elegance is perfect, 
but it is not supreme, like that of Virgil." And, indeed, 
there is something suiweme in an elegance which exercises 
such a fascination as Virgil's does ; which makes one re- 
turn to his poems again and again, long after one thinks 
one has done with them ; which makes them one of those 
books that, to use Joubert's words, '^lure the reader back 
to them, as the proverb says good wine lures back the 
wine-bibber." And the highest praise Joubert can at last 
find for Racine is this, that he is the Virgil of the igno- 
rant ; — '■^ Racine est le Virgile des ignorants.'^ 

Of Boileau, too, Joubert says : ^' Boileau is a powerful 
poet, but only in the world of half poetry." How true is 
that of Pope also ! And he adds : " Neither Boileau's 
poetry nor Racine's flows from the fountain-head." No 
Englishman, controverting the exaggerated French esti- 
mate of these poets, could desire to use fitter words. 

I will end with some remarks on Voltaire and Rousseau, 
remarks in which Joubert eminently shows his prime 
merit as a critic, — the soundness and completeness of his 
judgments. I mean that he has the faculty of judging 
with all the powers of his mind and soul at work together 
in due combination ; and how rare is this faculty ! how 
seldom is it exercised towards writers who so powerfully 
as Voltaire and Rousseau stimulate and call into activity 
a single side in us ! 

*^ Voltaire's wits came to their maturity twenty years 
sooner than the wits of other men, and remained in full 
vigor thirty years longer. The charm which our style in 
general gets from our ideas, his ideas get from his style. 
Voltaire is sometimes afiflicted, sometimes strongly moved f 
but serious he never is. His very graces have an effrontery 



JOUBERT. 219 

about them. He had correctness of judgment, liveliness 
of imagination, nimble wits, quick taste, and a moral 
sense in ruins. He is the most debauched of spirits, and 
the worst of him is that one gets debauched along with 
him. If he had been a wise man, and had had the self- 
discipline of wisdom, beyond a doubt half his wit would 
have been gone ; it needed an atmosphere of licence in 
order to play freely. Those people who read him every 
day, create for themselves, by an invincible law, the 
necessity of liking him. But those people who, having 
given up reading him, gaze steadily down upon the in- 
fluences which his spirit has shed abroad, find themselves 
in simple justice and duty compelled to detest him. It is 
impossible to be satisfied with him, and impossible not to 
be fascinated by him." 

The literary sense in us is apt to rebel against so severe 
a judgment on such a charmer of the literary sense as 
Voltaire, and perhaps we English are not very liable to 
catch Voltaire's vices, while of some of his merits we have 
signal need ; still, as the real definitive judgment on Vol- 
taire, Joubert's is undoubtedly the true one. It is nearly 
identical with that of Goethe. Joubert's sentence on 
Eousseau is in some respects more favorable : — 

'^ That weight in the speaker (auctoritas) which the an- 
cients talk of, is to be found in Bossuet more than in any 
other French author ; Pascal, too, has it, and La Bruyere ; 
even Eousseau has something of it, but Voltaire not a 
particle. I can understand how a Eousseau — I mean a 
Eousseau cured of his faults — might at the present day do 
much good, and may even come to be greatly wanted ; 
but under no circumstances can a Voltaire be of any use." 

The peculiar power of Eoasseau's style has never been 
better hit off than in the following passage : — 

^^ Eousseau imparted, if I may so speak, hoiueh of feeling 
to the words he used {donna cles entrailles a tons lesmots), 
and poured into them such a charm, sweetness so penetra- 
ting, energy so puissant, that his writings have an effect 
upon the soul something like that of those illicit pleasures 
which steal away our taste and intoxicate our reason." 



220^ ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

The final judgment, however, is severe, and justly 
sevore : — 

^'Life without actions ; life entirely resolved into affec- 
tions and half-sensual thoughts ; do-nothingness setting 
up for a virtue ; cowardliness with voluptuousness ; fierce 
pride with nullity underneath it; the strutting phrase of 
the most sensual of vagabonds, who has made his system 
of philosophy and can give it eloquently forth : there is 
Rousseau ! A piety in which there is no religion ; a 
severity which brings corruption with it ; a dogmatism 
which serves to ruin all authority : there is Rousseau's 
philosophy ! To all tender, ardent, and elevated natures, 
I say : Only Rousseau can detach you from religion, and 
only true religion can cure you of Rousseau." 

I must yet find room, before I end, for one at least 
of Joubert's sayings on political matters ; here, too, the 
whole man shows himself ; and here, too, the affinity with 
Coleridge is very remarkable. How true, how true in 
France especially, is this remark on the contrasting direc- 
tion taken by the aspirations of the community in ancient 
and in modern states : — 

'^ The ancients were attached to their country by three 
things, — their temples, their tombs, and their forefathers. 
The two great bonds which united them to their govern- 
ment were the bonds of habit and antiquity. With the 
moderns, hope and the love of novelty have produced a 
total change. The ancients said oiir forefathers, we say 
posterity : we do not, like them, love our patria, that is 
to say, the country and the laws of our fathers, rather we 
love the laws and the country of our children ; the charm 
we are most sensible to is the charm of the future, and not 
the charm of the past." 

And how keen and true is this criticism on the changed 
sense of the word " liberty " : — 

*'A great many words have changed their meaning. 
The word liberty, for example, had at bottom among the 
ancients the same meaning as the word dominioii. Itvoiild 
he free meant, in the mouth of the ancient, / would take 
part in governing or administering the State; in the 



JOUBERT. 221 

mouth of a modern it means, / luould he independent. 
The word liberty has with us a moral sense ; with them 
its sense was purely political." 

Joubert had lived through the French Eevolution, and 
to the modern cry for liberty he was prone to answer : — 

^^ Let your cry be for free souls rather even than for 
free men. Moral liberty is the one vitally important 
libert}^, the one liberty which is indispensable ; the other 
liberty is good and salutary only so far as it favors this. 
Subordination is in itself a better thing than independence. 
The one implies order and arrangement ; the other implies 
only self-sufficiency with isolation. The one means har- 
mony, the other a single tone ; the one is the whole, the 
other is but the part." 

" Liberty ! liberty ! " he cries again ; '^ in all things let 
us h^iYe justice, and then we shall have enough liberty.*^ 

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough 
liberty ! The wise man will never refuse to echo those 
words ; but then, such is the imperfection of human gov- 
ernments, that almost always, in order to get justice, one 
has first to secure liberty. 

I do not hold up Joubert as a very astonishing and 
powerful genius, but rather as a delightful and edifying 
genius. I have not cared to exhibit him as a sayer of bril- 
liant epigrammatic things, such things as ** Notre vie est 
du vent tissu . . . . les dettes abregent la vie .... celui 
qui a de Timagination sans erudition a des ailes et n'a pas 
de pieds ( Our life is woven wind .... debts take from life 
. . . . tlie man of imagination without learning lias luings 
and no feet), ^^ though for- such sayings he is famous. In 
the first place, the French language is in itself so favor- 
able a vehicle for such sayings, that the making them in 
it has the less merit ; at least half the merit ought to go, 
not to the maker of the saying, but to the French lan- 
guage. In the second place, the peculiar beauty of Jou- 
bert is not there ; it is not in what is exclusively intellec- 
tual,— it is in the union of soul Avith intellect, and in the 
delightful, satisfying result which this union produces. 
'^ Vivre, c'est penser et sentir son dme . . . . le bonheur 



222 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

est de sentir son ame bonne .... toute verite nue et crue 
n'a pas assez passe par Tame . . . . les hommes ne sont 
justes qu'envers ceux qu'ils aiment {The essence of life 
lies in thinking and being conscioiis of one''s soul .... 
hajpinness is the sense of one^s soul being good . . . , if 
a truth is nude and critde, that is a proof it has not been 
steeped long enough in the soul, .... 7nan cannot even 
be just to his neighbor, unless he loves him) ;" it is much 
rather in sayings like these that Joubert^s best and in- 
nermost nature manifests itself. He is the most prepos- 
sessing and convincing of witnesses to the good of loving 
light. Because he sincerely loved light, and did not pre- 
fer to it any little private darkness of his own, he found 
light ; his eye was single, and therefore his whole body 
was full of light. And because he was full of light, he 
was also full of happiness. In spite of his infirmities, 
in spite of his sufferings, in spite of his obscurity, he 
was the happiest man alive ; his life was as charming as 
his thoughts. For certainly it is natural that the love 
of light, which is already, in some measure, the possession 
of light, should irradiate and beatify the whole life of him 
who has it. There is something unnatural and shocking 
where, as in the case of Coleridge, it does not. Joubert 
pains us by no such contradiction ; ^' the same penetra- 
tion of spirit which made him such delightful company to 
his friends, served also to make him perfect in his own 
personal life, by enabling him always to perceive and do 
what was right ; " he loved and sought light till he be- 
came so habituated to it, so accustomed to the joyful 
testimony of a good conscience, that, to use his own 
words, '' he could no longer exist without this, and was 
obliged to live without reproach if he would live with- 
out misery." 

Joubert was not famous while he lived, and he will not 
be famous now that he is dead. But, before we pity him for 
this, let us be sure what we mean, in literature, by 
famous. There are the famous men of genius in litera- 
ture, — the Homers, Dantes,S]iakespeares : of them we need 
not speak ; their praise is forever and ever. Then tliere 



JOUBERT. 223 

are the famous men of ability in literature : their praise 
is in their own generation. And what makes this differ- 
ence ? The work of the two orders of men is at the 
bottom the same, — a criticism of life. The end and aim 
of all literature, if one considers it attentively, is, in truth, 
nothing but that. But the criticism which the men of 
genius pass upon human life is permanently acceptable to 
mankind ; the criticism which the men of ability pass 
upon human life is transitorily acceptable. Between 
Shakespeare's criticism of human life and Scribe^'s the 
difference is there ; — the one is permanently acceptable, 
the other transitorily. Whence then, I repeat, this differ- 
ence ? It is that the acceptableness of Shakespeare's criti- 
cism depends upon its inherent truth : the acceptableness 
of Scribe's upon its suiting itself, by its subject-matter, 
ideas, mode of treatment, to the taste of the generation 
that hears it. But the taste and ideas of one generation 
are not those of the next. This next generation in its 
turn arrives ; — first its sharpshooters, its quick-witted, 
audacious light troops ; then the elephantine main body. 
The imposing array of its predecessor it confidently assails, 
riddles it with bullets, passes over its body. It goes hard 
then with many once popular reputations, with. many au- 
thorities once oracular. Only two kinds of authors are 
safe in the general havoc. The first kind are the great 
abounding fountains of truth, whose criticism of life is a 
source of illumination and Joy to the whole human race 
forever, — the Homers, the Shakespeares. These are the 
sacred personages, whom all civilized warfare respects. 
The second are those whom the out-skirmishers of the 
new generation, its forerunners, — quick-witted soldiers, 
as I have said, the select of the army, — recognize, though 
the bulk of their comrades behind might not, as of the 
same family and character with the sacred personages, 
exercising like them an immortal function, and like them 
inspiring a permanent interest. They snatch them up, 
and set them in a place of shelter, where the on-coming 
multitude may not overwhelm them. These are the Jou- 
berts. They will never, like the Shakespeares, command 



224 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the homage of the multitude ; but they are safe ; the 
multitude will not trample them down. Except these two 
kinds, no author is safe. Let us consider, for example, 
Joubert's famous contemporary. Lord Jeffrey. All his 
vivacity and accomplishment avail him nothing ; of the 
true critic he had in an eminent degree no quality, ex- 
cept one, — curiosity. Curiosity he had, but he had no 
gift for truth ; he cannot illuminate and rejoice us ; no 
intelligent out-skirmisher of the new generation cares 
about him, cares to put him in safety ; at this moment we 
are all passing over his body. Let us consider a greater 
than Jeffrey, a critic whose reputation still stands firm, — 
will stand, many people think, forever, — the great apostle 
of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay was, 
as I have already said, a born rhetorician ; a splendid 
rhetorician doubtless, and, beyond that, an English rhet- 
orician also, an honest rhetorician ; still, beyond the ap- 
parent rhetorical truth of things he never could penetrate ; 
for their vital truth, for what the French call the vraie 
verite, he had absolutely no organ ; therefore his reputa- 
tion, brilliant as it is, is not secure. Ehetoric so good as 
his excites and gives pleasure ; but by pleasure alone you 
cannot permanently bind men's spirits to you. Truth 
illuminates and gives joy, and it is by the bond of joy, 
not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held. 
As Lord Macaulay's own generation dies out, as a new 
generation arrives, without those ideas and tendencies of 
its predecessor which Lord Macaulay so deeply shared and 
so happily satisfied, will he give the same pleasure ? and, 
if he ceases to give this, has he enough of light in him to 
make him last ? Pleasure the new generation will get 
from its own novel ideas and tendencies ; but light is 
another and a rarer thing, and must be treasured where- 
ever it can be found. Will Macaulay be saved, in the 
sweep and pressure of time, for his light's sake, as John- 
son has already been saved by two generations, Joubert by 
one ? I think it very doubtful. But for a spirit of any 
delicacy and dignity, what a fate, if he could foresee it ! 
to be an oracle for one generation, and then of little or no 



JOUBBRT. 225 

account forever. How far better, to pass with scant 
notice through one's own generation, but to be singled 
out and preserved by the very iconoclasts of the next, 
then in their turn by those of the next, and so, like the 
lamp of life itself, to be handed on from one generation 
to another in safety ! This is Joubert's lot, and it is a 
very enviable one. The new men of the new generations, 
while they let the dust deepen on a thousand Laharpes, 
will say of him : -'He lived in the Philistine's day, in a 
place and time when almost every idea current in litera- 
ture had the mark of Dagon upon it, and not the mark of 
the children of light. Nay, the children of light were as 
yet hardly so much as heard of : the Canaanite was then 
in the land. Still, there were even then a few, who, 
nourished on some secret tradition, or illumined, perhaps, 
by a divine inspiration, kept aloof from the reigning 
superstitions, never bowed the knee to the gods of Canaan ; 
and one of these few was called Joubert." 
»5 



226 ESSAYS IN CEITICISM. 



IX. 

SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

^^ By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the 
saints, we anathematize, cut off, curse, and execrate 
Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of these sacred books 
with the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are 
written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua 
anathematized Jericho ; with the cursing wherewith Elisha 
cursed the children ; and with all the cursings which are 
written in the Book of the Law : cursed be he by day, and 
cursed by night ; cursed when he lietli down, and cursed 
when he riseth up ; cursed when he goeth out, and cursed 
when he cometh in ; the Lord pardon him never ; the 
wrath and fury of the Lord burn upon this man, and 
bring upon him all the curses which are written in the 
Book of the Law. The Lord blot out his name under 
heaven. The Lord set him apart for destruction from all 
the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament 
which are written in the Book of this Law. . . . There 
shall be no man speak to him, no man write to him, no 
man show him any kindness, no man stay under the same 
roof with him, no man come nigh him." 

With these amenities, the current compliments of theo- 
logical parting, the Jews of the Portuguese synagogue at 
Amsterdam took in 1656 (and not in 1660, as has till now 
been commonly supposed) their leave of their erring 
brother, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza. They remained 
children of Israel, and he became a child of modern 
Europe. 

That was in 1656, and Spinoza died in 1677, at the 
early age of forty -four. Glory had not found him out. 
His short life — a life of unbroken diligence, kindliness, 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 227 

and purity — was passed in seclusion. But in spite of that 
seclusion, in spite of the shortness of his career, in spite 
of the hostility of the dispensers of renown in the 18th 
century, — of Voltaire^s disparagement and Bayle's detrac- 
tion, — in spite of the repellent form which he has given 
to his principal work, in spite of the exterior semblance of 
a rigid dogmatism alien to the most essential tendencies 
of modern philosophy, in spite, finally, of the immense 
weight of disfavor cast upon him by the long-repeated 
charge of atheism, Spinoza's name has silently risen in 
importance, the man and his work have attracted a 
steadily increasing notice, and bid fair to become soon 
what they deserve to become, — in the history of modern 
philosophy the central point of interest. An avowed 
translation of one of his works, — his Tractatus Theologico- 
Politicus, — has at last made its appearance in English. 
It is the principal work which Spinoza published in his 
lifetime ; his book on ethics, the work on which his fame 
rests, is posthumous. 

The English translator has not done his task well. Of 
the character of his version there can, I am afraid, be no 
doubt ; one such passage as the following is decisive : — 

'^ I confess that, ivliile luitli them (the theologians) / 
have never heen able sufficiently to admire the unfathomed 
mysteries of Scripture, I have still found them giving ut- 
terance to nothing hut Aristotelian and Platonic specula- 
tions, artfully dressed up and cunningly accommodated 
to Holy Writ, lest the speakers should show themselves 
too plainly to belong to the sect of the Grecian heathens. 
Nor luas it enough for these men to discourse with the 
Greeks ; they have further tahen to raving tvitli the He- 
breiu prophets." 

This professes to be a translation of these words of Spin- 
oza : ^' Fateor, eos nunquam satis mirari potuisse Scripturse 
profundissima mysteria ; attamen prseter Aristotelicorum 
vel Platonicorum speculationes nihil docuisse video, atque 
his, ne gentiles sectari viderentur, Scripturam accommoda- 
verunt. JSTon satis his fuit cum Graecis insanire, sed 
prophetas cum iisdem deliravisse voluerunt." After one 



228 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

such specimen of a translator's force, the experienced 
reader has a sort of instinct that he may as well close the 
book at once, with a smile or a sigh, according as he 
happens to be a follower of the weeping or of the laugh- 
ing philosopher. If, in spite of this instinct, he persists 
in going on with the English version of the Tractatus 
Theologico-PoliticuSf he will find many more such speci- 
mens. It is not, however, my intention to fill my space 
with these, or with strictures upon their author. I prefer 
to remark, that he renders a service to literary history by 
pointing out, in his preface, how ** to Bayle maybe traced 
the disfavor in which the name of Spinoza was so long 
held ; " that, in his observations on the system of the 
Church of England, he shows a laudable freedom from the 
prejudices of ordinary English Liberals of that advanced 
school to which he clearly belongs ; and lastly, that, 
though he manifests little familiarity with Latin, he seems 
to have considerable familiarity with philosophy, and 
to be well able to follow and comprehend speculative 
reasoning. Let me advise him to unite his forces with 
those of some one who has that accurate knowledge of 
Latin which he himself has not, and then, perhaps, of that 
union a really good translation of Spinoza will be the 
result. And, having given him this advice, let me again 
turn, for a little, to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 
itself. 

This work, as I have already said, is a work on the in- 
terpretation of Scripture, — it treats of the Bible. What 
was it exactly which Spinoza thought about the Bible and 
its inspiration ? That will be, at the present moment, the 
central point of interest for the English readers of his 
Treatise. Now, it is to be observed, that just on this very 
point the Treatise, interesting and remarkable as it is, 
will fail to satisfy the reader. It is important to seize this 
notion quite firmly, and not to quit hold of it while one is 
reading Spinoza's work. The scope of that work is this. 
Spinoza sees that the life and practice of Christian nations 
professing the religion of the Bible, are not the due fruits 
of the religion of the Bible ; he sees only hatred, bitter- 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE, 229 

ness, and strife, where he might have expected to see love, 
joy, and peace in believing ; and he asks himself the rea- 
son of this. The reason is, he says, that these people 
misunderstand their Bible. Well, then, is his conclusion, 
I will write a Tractatits Tlieologico-PoUticus, I will show 
these people, that, taking the Bible for granted, taking it 
to be all which it asserts itself to be, taking it to have all 
the authority which it claims, it is not what they imagine 
it to be, it does not say what they imagine it to say. I 
will show them what it really does say, and I will show 
them that they will do well to accept this real teaching 
of the Bible, instead of the phantom with which they have 
so long been cheated. I will show their governments that 
that they will do well to remodel the national churches, 
to make of them institutions informed with the spirit of 
the true Bible, instead of institutions informed with the 
spirit of this false phantom. 

The comments of men, Spinoza said, had been foisted 
into the Christian religion ; the pure teaching of God had 
been lost sight of. He determined, therefore, to go again 
to the Bible, to read it over and over with a perfectly un- 
prejudiced mind, and to accept nothing as its teaching 
which it did not clearly teach. He began by constructing 
a method, or set of conditions indispensable for the ade- 
quate interpretation of Scripture. These conditions are 
such, he points out, that a perfectly adequate interpreta- 
tion of Scripture is now impossible. For example, to 
understand any prophet thoroughly, we ought to know 
the life, character, and pursuits of that prophet, under 
what circumstances his book was composed, and in what 
state and through what hands it has come down to us ; 
and, in general, most of this we cannot now know. Still, 
the main sense of the Books of Scripture may be clearly 
seized by us. Himself a Jew with all the learning of his 
nation, and a man of the highest natural powers, Spinoza 
had in the difficult task of seizing this sense every aid 
which special knowledge or pre-eminent faculties could 
supply. 

In what then, he asks, does Scripture, interpreted by 



230 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

its own aid, and not by the aid of Eabbinical traditions 
or Greek philosophy, allege its own divinity to consist ? 
In a revelation given by God to the prophets. Now all 
knowledge is a divine revelation ; but prophecy, as rep- 
resented in Scripture, is one of which the laws of human 
nature, considered in themselves alone, cannot be the 
cause. Therefore nothing must be asserted about it, ex- 
cept what is clearly declared by the prophets themselves ; 
for they are our only source of knowledge on a matter 
which does not fall within the scope of our ordinary 
knowing faculties. But ignorant people, not knowing the 
Hebrew genius and phraseology, and not attending to the 
circumstances of the speaker, often imagine the prophets, 
to assert things which they do not. 

The prophets clearly declare themselves to have received 
the revelation of God through the means of words and 
images ; — not, as Christ, through immediate communica- 
tion of the mind with the mind of God. Therefore the 
prophets excelled other men by the power and vividness of 
their representing and imagining faculty, not by the per- 
fection of their mind. This is why they perceived almost 
everything through figures, and express themselves so va- 
riously, and so improperly, concerning the nature of God. 
Moses imagined that God could be seen, and attributed to 
him the passions of anger and jealousy ; Micaiah imagined 
him sitting on a throne, with the host of heaven on his 
right and left hand ; Daniel as an old man, with a white 
garment and white hair ; Ezekiel as a fire ; the disciples 
of Christ thought they saw the Spirit of God in the form 
of a dove ; the apostles in the form of fiery tongues. 

Whence, then, could the prophets be certain of the truth 
of a revelation which they received through the imagina- 
tion, and not by a mental process ? — for only an idea can 
carry the sense of its own certainty along with it, not an 
imagination. To make them certain of the truth of what 
was revealed to them, a reasoning process came in ; they 
had to rely on the testimony of a sign ; and (above all) on 
the testimony of their own conscience, that they were good 
men, and spoke for God's sake. Either testimony was in- 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 231 

complete without the other. Even the good prophet 
needed for his message the confirmation of a sign ; but the 
bad prophet, the utterer of an immoral doctrine, had no 
certainty for his doctrine, no truth in it, even though he 
confirmed it by a sign. The testimony of a good con- 
science was, therefore, the prophet's grand source of certi- 
tude. Even this, however, was only a moral certitude, 
not a mathematical ; for no man can be perfectly sure of 
his own goodness. 

The power of imagining, the power of feeling what good- 
ness is, and the habit of practising goodness, were there- 
fore the sole essential qualifications of a true prophet. But 
for the purpose of the message, the revelation, which God 
designed him to convey, these qualifications were enough. 
The sum and substance of this revelation was simply : 
Believe in God, and lead a good life. To be the organ of 
this revelation, did not make a man more learned ; it left 
his scientific knowledge as it found it. This explains the 
contradictory and speculatively false opinions about God, 
and the laws of nature, which the patriarchs, the prophets, 
the apostles entertained. Abraham and the patriarchs 
knew God only as El Sadai, the power which gives to every 
man that which suffices him ; Moses knew him as Jehovah, 
a self-existent being, but imagined him with the passions of 
a man. Samuel imagined that God could not repent of 
his sentences ; Jeremiah, that he could. Joshua, on a day 
of great victory, the ground being white with hail, seeing 
the daylight last longer than usual, and imaginatively seiz- 
ing this as a special sign of the help divinely promised to 
him, declared that the sun was standing still. To be obey- 
ers of God themselves, and inspired leaders of others to 
obedience and good life, did not make Abraham and Moses 
metaphysicians, or Joshua a natural philosopher. His 
revelation no more changed the speculative opinions of 
each prophet, than it changed his temperament or style. 
The wrathful Elisha required the natural sedative of music, 
before he could be the messenger of good fortune to Jeho- 
ram. The high-bred Isaiah and Nahum have the style 
proper to their condition, and the rustic Ezekiel and 



232 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Amos the style proper to theirs. We are not therefore 
bound to pay heed to the speculative opinions of this or 
that prophet, for in uttering these he spoke as a mere 
man : only in exhorting his hearers to obey Grod and lead 
a good life was he the organ of a divine revelation. 

To know and love God is the highest blessedness of man, 
and of all men alike ; to this all mankind are called, and 
not any one nation in particular. The divine law, properly 
named, is the method of life for attaining this height of 
human blessedness : this law is universal, written in the 
heart, and one for all mankind. Human law is the 
method of life for attaining and preserving temporal se- 
curity and prosperity : this law is dictated by a lawgiver, 
and every nation has its own. In the case of the Jews, 
this law was dictated, by revelation, through the prophets ; 
its fundamental precept was to obey God and to keep his 
commandments, and it is therefore, in a secondary sense, 
called divine ; but it was, nevertheless, framed in respect 
of temporal things only. Even the truly moral and divine 
precept of this law, to practise for God's sake justice and 
mercy towards one's neighbor, meant for the Hebrew of 
the Old Testament this Hebrew neighbor only, and had 
respect to the concord and stability of the Hebrew com- 
monwealth. The Jews were to obey God and to keep his 
commandments, that they might continue long in the land 
given to them, and that it might be well with them there. 
Their election was a temporal one, and lasted only so long 
as their State. It is now over ; and the only election the 
Jews now have is that of the piotis, the rem?iant which 
takes place, and has always taken place, in every other 
nation also. Scripture itself teaches that there is a uni- 
versal divine law, that this is common to all nations alike, 
and is the law which truly confers eternal blessedness. 
Solomon, the wisest of the Jews, knew this law, as the few 
wisest men in all nations have ever known it ; but for the 
mass of the Jews, as for the mass of mankind everywhere, 
this law was hidden, and they had no notion of its moral 
action, its vera vita which condncts to eternal blessedness, 
except so far as this action was enjoined upon them by the 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 233 

prescriptions of their temporal law. When the ruin of 
their State brought with it the ruin of their temporal law, 
they would have lost altogether their only clue to eternal 
blessedness. 

Christ came when that fabric of the Jewish State, 
for the sake of which the Jewish law existed, was 
about to fall ; and he proclaimed the universal divine 
law. A certain moral action is prescribed by this 
law, as a certain moral action was prescribed by the 
Jewish law : but he who truly conceives the univer- 
sal divine law conceives God's decrees adequately as 
eternal truths, and for him moral action has liberty 
and self-knowledge ; while the prophets of the Jewish 
law inadequately conceived God's decrees as mere rules 
and commands, and for them moral action had no liberty 
and no self-knowledge. Christ, who beheld the decrees 
of God as God himself beholds them, — as eternal truths, — 
proclaimed the love of God and the love of our neighbor 
as commands, only because of the ignorance of the multi- 
tude : to those to whom it was *' given to know the mys- 
teries of the kingdom of God,'* he announced them, as he 
himself perceived them, as eternal truths. And the 
apostles, like Christ, spoke to many of their hearers *' as 
unto carnal not spiritual ; " presented to them, that 
is, the love of God and their neighbor as a divine com- 
mand authenticated by the life and death of Christ,not as an 
eternal idea of reason carrying its own warrant along with it. 
The presentation of it as this latter their hearers " were 
not able to bear." The apostles, moreover, though they 
preached and confirmed their doctrine by signs as 
prophets, wrote their Epistles, not as prophets, but as 
doctors and reasoners. The essentials of their doctrine, 
indeed, they took not from reason, but, like the prophets, 
from fact and revelation ; they preached belief in God and 
goodness of life as a catholic religion existing by virtue of the 
passion of Christ, as the prophets had preached belief in 
God and goodness of life as a national religion existing by 
virtue of the Mosaic covenant : but while the prophets 
announced their message in a form purely dogmatical the 



234: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

apostles developed theirs with the forms of reasoning and 
argumentation, according to each apostle's ability and 
way of thinking, and as they might best commend their 
message to their hearers ; and for their reasonings they 
themselves claim no divine authority, submitting them to 
the judgment of their hearers. Thus each apostle built 
essential religion on anon-essential foundation of his own, 
and, as St. Paul says, avoided building on the foundations 
of another apostle, which might be quite different from 
his own. Hence the discrepancies between the doctrine 
of one apostle and another, — between that of St. Paul, for 
example, and that of St. James ; but these discrepancies 
are in the non-essentials not given to them by revelation, 
and not in essentials. Human churches, seizing these 
discrepant non-essentials as essentials, one maintaining one 
of them, another another, have filled the world with un- 
profitable disputes, have '' turned the Church into an 
academy, and religion into a science, or rather a wran- 
gling," and have fallen into endless schism. 

What, then, are the essentials of religion according 
both to the Old and to the New Testament ? Very few 
and very simple. The precept to love God and our 
neighbor. The precepts of the first chapter of Isaiah : 
'' Wash you, make you. clean ; put away the evil of your do- 
ings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do 
well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge the 
fatherless ; plead for the widow." The precepts of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, which add to the foregoing the injunc- 
tion that we should cease to do evil and learn to do well, not 
to our brethren and fellow-citizens only, but to all man- 
kind. It is by following these precepts that belief in God 
is to be shown : if we believe in him, we shall keep his 
commandment ; and this is his commandment, that we 
love one another. It is because it contains these precepts 
that the Bible is properly called the Word of God, in spite 
of its containing much that is mere history, and, like all 
history, sometimes true, sometimes false ; in spite of its 
containing much that is mere reasoning, and, like all 
reasoning, sometimes sound, sometimes hollow. These 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 235 

precepts are also the precepts of the universal divine law 
written in our hearts ; and it is only by this that the divinity 
of Scripture is established ; — by its containing, namely, 
precepts identical with those of this inly-written and self- 
proving law. This law was in the world, as St. John says, 
before the doctrine of Moses or the doctrine of Christ. And 
what need was there, then, for these doctrines ? Because the 
world at large " knew not " this original divine law, in which 
precepts are ideas, and the belief in God the knowledge and 
contemplation of him. Reason gives us this law, reason 
tells us that it leads to eternal blessedness, and that those 
who follow it have no need of any other. But reason 
could not have told us that the moral action of the univer- 
sal divine law, — followed not from a sense of its intrinsic 
goodness, truth, and necessity, but simply in proof of 
obedience (for both the Old and New Testament are but 
one long discipline of obedience), simply because it is so 
commanded by Moses in virtue of the covenant, simply 
because it is so commanded by Christ in virtue of his life 
and passion, — can lead to eternal blessedness, which 
means, for reason, eternal knowledge. Reason could not 
have told us this, and this is what the Bible tells us. This 
is that ** thing which had been kept secret since the 
foundation of the world." It is thus that by means of the 
foolishness of the world God confounds the wise, and with 
things that are not brings to nought things that are. Of 
the truth of the promise thus made to obedience without 
knowledge, we can have no mathematical certainty ; for 
we can have a mathematical certainty only of things 
deduced by reason from elements which she in herself 
possesses. But we can have a moral certainty of it ; a 
certainty such as the prophets had themselves, arising out 
of the goodness and pureness of those to whom this reve- 
lation has been made, and rendered possible for us by its 
contradicting no principles of reason. It is a great com- 
fort to believe it ; because " as it is only the very small 
minority who can pursue a virtuous life by the sole guid- 
ance of reason, we should, unless we had this testimony of 
Scripture, be in doubt respecting the salvation of nearly 
the whole human race." 



236 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

It follows from this that philosophy has her own inde- 
pendent sphere, and theology hers, and that neither has 
the right to invade and try to subdue the other. Theology 
demands perfect obedience, philosophy perfect knowledge ; 
the obedience demanded by theology and the knowledge 
demanded by philosophy are alike saving. As speculati/e 
opinions about God, theology requires only such as are 
indispensable to the reality of this obedience ; the belief 
that God is, that he is a rewarder of them that seek him, 
and that the proof of seeking him is a good life. These 
are the fundamentals of faith, and they are so clear and 
simple that none of the inaccuracies provable in the Bible 
narrative the least affect them, and they have indubitably 
come to us uncorrupted. He who holds them may make, 
as the patriarchs and prophets did, other speculations 
about God most erroneous, and yet their faith is complete 
and saving. Nay, beyond these fundamentals, speculative 
opinions are pious or impious, not as they are true or 
false, but as they confirm or shake the believer in the 
practice of obedience. The truest speculative opinion 
about the nature of God is impious if it makes its holder 
rebellious ; the falsest speculative opinion is pious if it 
makes him obedient. Governments should never render 
themselves the tools of ecclesiastical ambition by pro- 
mulgating as fundamentals of the national Church's faith 
more than these, and should concede the fullest liberty 
of speculation. 

But the multitude, which respects only what astonishes, 
terrifies, and overwhelms it, by no means takes this simple 
view of its own religion. To the multitude, religion seems 
imposing only when it is subversive of reason, confirmed 
by miracles, conveyed in documents materially sacred and 
infallible, and dooming to damnation all without its pale. 
But this religion of the multitude is not the religion which 
a true interpretation of Scripture finds in Scripture. 
Eeason tells us that a miracle, — understanding by a mir- 
acle a breach of the laws of nature, — is impossible, and that 
to think it possible is to dishonor God ; for the laws of 
nature are the laws of God, and to say that God violates 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 237 

the laws of nature is to say that he violates his own nature. 
Reason sees, too, that miracles can never attain their pro- 
fessed object, — that of bringing us to a higher knowledge 
of God ; since our knowledge of God is raised only by 
perfecting and clearing our conceptions, and the alleged 
design of miracles is to baffle them. But neither does 
Scripture anywhere assert, as a general truth, that mira- 
acles are possible. Indeed, it asserts the contrary ; for 
Jeremiah declares that Nature follows an invariable order. 
Scripture, however, like Nature herself, does not lay down 
speculative propositions {ScyHptiora defiuitiones non tradit, 
tit nee etiam naUtra). It relates matters in such an order 
and with such phraseology as a speaker (often not perfectly 
instructed himself) who wanted to impress his hearers 
with a lively sense of God's greatness and goodness would 
naturally employ ; as Moses, for instance, relates to the 
Israelites the passage of the Red Sea without any men- 
tion of the east wind which attended it, and which is 
brought accidentally to our knowledge in another place. 
So that to know exactly what Scripture means in the rela- 
tion of each seeming miracle, we ought to know (besides 
the tropes and phrases of the Hebrew language) the cir- 
cumstances, and also, — since every one is swayed in his 
manner of presenting facts by his own preconceived opin- 
ions, and we have seen what those of the prophets were, — 
the preconceived opinions of each speaker. But this mode 
of interpreting Scripture is fatal to the vulgar notion of 
its verbal inspiration, of a sanctity and absolute truth in 
all the words and sentences of which it is composed. This 
vulgar notion is, indeed, a palpable error. It is demon- 
strable from the internal testimony of the Scriptures them- 
selves, that the books from the first of the Pentateuch 
to the last of Kings were put together, after the first de- 
struction of Jerusalem, by a compiler (probably Ezra) who 
designed to relate the history of the Jewish people from 
its origin to that destruction ; it is demonstrable, more- 
over, that the compiler did not put his last hand to the 
work, but left it with its extracts from various and con- 
flicting sources sometimes unreconciled, left it with errors 



238 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of text and unsettled readings. The prophetic books are 
mere fragments of the prophets, collected by the Rabbins 
where they could find them, and inserted in the Canon 
according to their discretion. They, at first, proposed to 
admit neither the Book of Proverbs nor the Book of Eccle- 
siastes into the Canon, and only admitted them because 
there were found in them passages which commended the 
law of Moses. Ezekiel also they had determined to ex- 
clude ; but one of their number remodeled him, so as to 
procure his admission. The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, 
Esther, and Daniel are the work of a single author, and 
were not written till after Judas Maccabeus had restored 
the worship of the Temple. The Book of Psalms was col- 
lected and arranged at the same time. Before this time, 
there was no Canon of the sacred writings, and the great 
synagogue, by which the Canon was fixed, was first con- 
vened after the Macedonian conquest of Asia. Of that 
synagogue none of the prophets were members ; the learned 
men who composed it were guided by their own fallible 
judgment. In like manner the uninspired judgment of 
human counsels determined the Canon of the New Testa- 
ment. 

Such, reduced to the briefest and plainest terms possi- 
ble, stripped of the developments and proofs with which 
he delivers it, and divested of the metaphysical language 
in which much of it is clothed by him, is the doctrine of 
Spinoza's treatise on the interpretation of Scripture. By 
the whole scope and drift of its argument, by the spirit 
in which the subject is throughout treated, his work unde- 
niably is most interesting and stimulating to the general 
culture of Europe. There are errors and contradictions in 
Scripture ; and the question which the general culture 
of Europe, well aware of this, asks with real interest is : 
What then ? What follows from all this ? What change 
is it, if true, to produce in the relations of mankind to 
tlie Christian religion ? If the old theory of Scripture 
inspiration is to be abandoned, what place is the Bible 
henceforth to hold among books ? AYhat is the new Chris- 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 239 

tianity to be like ? How are governments to deal with 
National Churches founded to maintain a very different 
conception of Christianity ? Spinoza addresses himself 
to these questions. All secondary points of criticism he 
touches with the utmost possible brevity. He points out 
that Moses could never have written : ^' And the Ca- 
naanite was then in the land /' because the Canaanite was 
in the land still at the death of Moses. He points out that 
Moses could never have written: ''There arose not a 
prophet since in Israel like unto Moses." He points out 
how such a passage as, " These are the kings that reigned 
in Edom defore there reigned any king over the children 
of Israel/^ clearly indicates an author writing not before 
the times of the Kings. He points out how the account 
of Og's iron bedstead : " Only Og the king of Bashan re- 
mained of the remnant of giants ; behold, his bedstead 
was a bedstead of iron ; is it not in Eabbath of the children 
of Ammon ? " — probably indicates an author writing after 
David had taken Eabbath, and found there '' abundance 
of spoil," amongst it this iron bedstead, the gigantic relic 
of another age. He points out how the language of this 
passage, and of such a passage as that in the Book of 
Samuel : '' Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to in- 
quire of Grod, thus he spake : Come and let us go to the 
seer ; for he that is now called prophet was aforetime 
called seer" — is certainly the language of a writer describ- 
ing the events of a long-past age, and not the language of 
a contemporary. But he devotes to all this no more space 
than is absolutely necessary. He apologizes for delaying 
over such matters so long : non est cur circa hcec dm 
detinear — nolo toediosd lectione lectorem detinere. For him 
the interesting question is, not whether the fanatical 
devotee of the letter is to continue, for a longer or for 
a shorter time, to believe that Moses sate in the land 
of Moab writing the description of his own death,.' but 
what he is to believe when he does not believe this. - Is 
he to take for the guidance of his life a great gloss put 
upon the Bible by theologians, who, " not content with 
going mad themselves with Plato and Aristotle, want to 



240 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

make Christ and the prophets go mad with them too," — 
or the Bible itself ? Is he to be presented by his national 
church with metaphysical formularies for his creed, or 
with the real fundamentals of Christianity ? If with the 
former, religion will never produce its due fruits. A few 
elect will still be saved ; but the vast majority of man- 
kind will remain without grace and without good works, 
hateful and hating one another. Therefore he calls ur- 
gently upon governments to make the national church 
what it should be. This is the conclusion of the whole 
matter for him ; a fervent appeal to the State, to save us 
from the untoward generation of metaphysical Article- 
makers. And therefore, anticipating Mr. Gladstone, he 
called his book The Church in its Relations tuith the 
State. 

Such is really the scope of Spinoza's work. He pursues 
a great object, and pursues it with signal ability. But it 
is important to observe that he nowhere distinctly gives 
his own opinion about the Bible's fundamental character. 
He takes the Bible as it stands, as he might take the phe- 
nomena of nature, and he discusses it as he finds it. 
Kevelation differs from natural knowledge, he says, not by 
being more divine or more certain than natural knowledge, 
but by being conveyed in a different way ; it differs from 
it because it is a knowledge '' of which the laws of human 
nature considered in themselves alone cannot be the 
cause." What is really its cause, he says, we need not 
.here inquire (verum 7iec nobis ja^n opiis est projjheticm 
cognitionis causam scire), for we take Scripture, wliich 
contains this revelation, as it stands, and do not ask how 
it arose {document or um causas nihil curamus). 

Proceeding on this principle, Spinoza leaves the at- 
tentive reader somewhat baffled and disappointed, clear, 
as is his w^ay of treating his subject, and remarkable as 
are the conclusions with which he presents us. He starts, 
we feel, from what is to him a hypothesis, and we want to 
know what he really thinks about this hypothesis. His 
greatest novelties are all within limits fixed for him by 
this hypothesis. He says that the voice which called 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 241 

Samuel was an imaginary voice ; he says that the waters 
of the Ked Sea retreated before a strong wind ; he says 
that theShunammite's son was revived by the natural heat 
of Elisha's body ; he says that the rainbow which was 
made a sign to Noah appeared in the ordinary course of 
nature. Scripture itself, rightly interpreted, says, he 
affirms, all this. But he asserts that the divine voice 
which uttered the commandments on Mount Sinai was a 
real voice vera vox. He says, indeed, that this voice could 
not really give to the Israelites that proof which they im- 
agined it gave to them of the existence of God, and that 
God on Sinai was dealing with the Israelites only according 
to their imperfect knowledge. Still he asserts the divine 
voice to have been a real one ; and for this reason, that 
we do violence to Scripture if we do not admit it to have 
been a real one {yiisi ScriphircB vim inferre velimus, om- 
nino concedendum est, Israelitas veram vocem audivisse.) 
The attentive reader wants to know what Spinoza himself 
thought about this vera roa:and its possibility ; he is much 
more interested in knowing this than in knowing what 
Spinoza considered Scripture to affirm about the matter. 
The feeling of perplexity thus caused is not dimin- 
ished by the language of the chapter on miracles. 
In this chapter Spinoza broadly affirms a miracle to 
be an impossibility. But he himself contrasts the 
method of demonstration a priori, by which he claims 
to have established this proposition, with the method 
which he has pursued in treating of prophetic revela- 
tion. *^ This revelation," he says, '^is a matter out of 
human reach, and therefore I was bound to take it as 
I found it." Monere volo, me alia ptrorsus methodo circa 
miraciila processisse, quam circa iwoplietiam . . . quod 
etiam considto feci, quia de p)roplietid, quandoquidem ipsa 
captum liumanum superat et qucestio mere tlieologica est, 
nihil affirmare, neque etiam scire poteram in quo ipsa 
potissimum constiterit, nisi ex fundamen tis revelatis. The 
reader feels that Spinoza, proceeding on a hypothesis, has 
presented him with the assertion of a miracle, and after- 
wards, proceeding a priori, has presented him Avith the 
i6 



242 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

assertion tliat a miracle is impossible. He feels that 
Spinoza does not adequately reconcile these two assertions 
by declaring that any event really miraculous, if found 
recorded in Scripture, must be ''^ a spurious addition made 
to Scripture by sacrilegious men." Is, then, he asks the 
vera vox of Mount Sinai in Spinoza's opinion a spurious 
addition made to Scripture by sacrilegious men ; or, if 
not, how is it not miraculous ? 

Spinoza, in his own mind, regarded the Bible as a vast 
collection of miscellaneous documents, many of them 
quite disparate and not at all to be harmonized with 
others ; documents of unequal value and of varying appli- 
cability, some of them conveying ideas salutary for one 
time, others for another. But in the Tractatus TlieologicO' 
Politicus he by no means always deals in this free spirit 
with the Bible. Sometimes he chooses to deal with it in 
the spirit of the veriest worshiper of the letter ; some- 
times he chooses to treat the Bible as if all its parts were 
(so to speak) equipollent ; to snatch an isolated text which 
suits his purpose, without caring whether it is annulled 
by the context, by the general drift of Scripture, or by 
other passages of more weight and authority. The great 
critic thus becomes voluntarily as uncritical as Exeter 
Hall. The Epicurean Solomon, whose Ecclesiastes the 
Hebrew doctors, even after they had received it into the 
canon, forbade the young and weak-minded among their 
community to read, Spinoza quotes as of the same au- 
thority with the severe Moses ; he uses promiscuously, as 
documents of identical force, without discriminating be- 
tween their essentially different character, the softened 
cosmopolitan teaching of the prophets of the captivity and 
the rigid national teaching of the instructors of Israel's 
youth. He is capable of extracting, from a chance ex- 
pression of Jeremiah, the assertion of a speculative idea 
which Jeremiah certainly never entertained, and from 
which he would have recoiled in dismay, — the idea, 
namely, that miracles are impossible ; just as the ordinary 
Englishman can extract from God's words to Noah, Be 
fruitful and multiply y an exhortation to himself to have 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 243 

a large family. Spiuoza, I repeat, knew perfectly well 
what this verbal mode of dealing with the Bible was 
worth : but he sometimes uses it because of the hypothesis 
from which he set out ; because of his having agreed ^' to 
take Scripture as it stands, and not to ask how it arose." 

Xo doubt the sagacity of Spinoza's rules for Biblical in- 
terpretation, the power of his analysis of the contents of 
the Bible, the interest of his reflections on Jewish history, 
are, in spite of this, very great, and have an absolute worth 
of their own, independent of the silence or ambiguity of 
their author upon a point of cardinal importance. Few 
candid people will read his rules of interpretation without 
exclaiming that they are the very dictates of good sense, 
that they have always believed in them ; and without 
adding, after a moment's reflection, that they have passed 
their lives in violating them. And what can be more inter- 
esting, than to find that perhaps the main cause of the 
decay of the Jewish polity was one of which from our 
English Bible, which entirely mistranslates the 26th verse 
of the 20th chapter of Ezekiel, we hear nothing, — the per- 
petual reproach of impurity and rejection cast upon the 
priesthood of the tribe of Levi ? What can be more sug- 
gestive, after Mr. Mill and Dr. Stanley have been telling 
us how great an element of strength to the Hebrew nation 
was the institution of prophets, than to hear from the 
ablest of Hebrews how this institution seems to him to 
have been to his nation one of her main elements of weak- 
ness ? No intelligent man can read the Tractatus Tlieo- 
logicO' PoUticus ^vithout being profoundly instructed by it ; 
but neither can he read it without feeling that, as a specu- 
lative work, it is, to use a French military expression, in 
the air ; that, in a certain sense, it is in want of a base 
and in want of supports ; that this base and these supports 
are, at any rate, not to be found in the work itself, and, 
if they exist, must be sought for in other works of the 
author. 

The genuine speculative opinions of Spinoza, which the 
Tractatus Theologico-PoUticus but imperfectly reveals, 
may in his Ethics and in his Letters be found set forth 



N 



24:4, ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

clearly. It is, however, the business of criticism to deal 
with every independent work as with an independent 
whole, and, instead of establishing between the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus alid the Ethics of Spinoza a relation 
which Spinoza himself has not established, — to seize, in 
dealing with the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the im- 
portant fact that this work has its source, not in the 
axioms and definition of the Ethics, but in a hypothesis. 
The Ethics are not yet translated into English, and 1 have 
not here to speak of them. Then will be the right time 
for criticism to try and seize the special character and 
tendencies of that remarkable work, when it is dealing 
with it directly. The criticism of the Ethics is far too 
serious a task to be undertaken incidentally, and merely 
as a supplement to the criticism of the Tractatus Theo- 
logico-Politicus. Nevertheless, on certain governing ideas 
;'of Spinoza, which receive their systematic expression, in- 
jdeed, in the Ethics, and on which the Tractatus Theologico- 
Politicus is not formally based, but which are yet never 
absent from Spinoza's mind in the composition of any 
work, which breathe through all his works, and fill them 
with a peculiar effect and power, I have a word or two to say. 
A philosopher's real power over mankind resides not in 
his metaphysical formulas, but in the spirit and tendencies 
which have led him to adopt those formulas. Spinoza's 
critic, therefore, has rather to bring to light that spirit 
and those tendencies of his author, than to exhibit his 
metaphysical formulas. Propositions about substance 
pass by mankind at large like the idle wind, which man- 
kind at large regards not ; it will not even listen to a word 
about these propositions, unless it first learns what their 
author was driving at with them, and finds that this ob- 
ject of his is one with which it sympathizes, one, at any 
rate, which commands its attention. And mankind is so 
far right that this object of the author is really, as has 
been said, that which is most important, that which sets 
all his work in motion, that which is the secret of his at- 
traction for other minds, which, by different ways, pursue 
the same object. 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 245 

Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe's great 
admiration for Spinoza, thinks that he finds it in Spinoza's 
Hebrew genius. ^^ He spoke of God," says Mr. Maurice, 
" as an actual being, to those who had fancied him a 
name in a book. The child of tlie circumcision had a 
message for Lessing and Goethe which the pagan schools 
of philosophy could not bring." This seems to me, I con- 
fess, fanciful. An intensity and impressiveness, which 
came to him from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no doubt 
has ; but the two things which are most remarkable about 
him, and by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed 
Goethe, seem to me not to come to him from his Hebrew 
nature at all, — I mean his denial of final causes, and his 
stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but active. For a mind 
like Goethe's, — a mind profoundly impartial and j^assion- 
ately aspiring after the science, not of men only, but of 
universal nature, — the popular philosophy which explains 
all things by reference to man, and regards universal na- 
ture as existing for the sake of man, and even of certain 
classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, this 
philosophy would gladly maintain that the donkey exists 
in order that the invalid Christian may have donkey's 
milk before breakfast ; and such views of nature as this 
were exactly what Goethe's whole soul abhorred. Cre- 
ation, he thought, should be made of sterner stuff : he 
desired to rest the donkey's existence on larger grounds. 
More than any philosopher who has ever lived, Spinoza 
satisfied him here. The full exposition of the counter- 
doctrine to the popular doctrine of final causes is to be 
found in the Ethics ; but this denial of final causes was so 
essential an element of all Spinoza's thinking that we 
shall, as has been said already, find it in the work with 
which we are here concerned, the Tractatus Theologico- 
Politicus, and, indeed, permeating that work and all his 
works. From the Tradatvs Theologico-Politicus one may 
take as good a general statement of this denial as any 
which IS to be found in the Ethics : — 

'' Deus naturam dirigit, pront ejus leges universales, 
non autem prout humane naturae particulares leges exi- 



24:6 ESSAYS AND CRITICISM. 

gunt, adeoque Dens non solins humani generis, sed totins 
naturae rationem habet. {God directs nature, according 
as the U7iiversal laws of nature, hut not according as the 
particular laius of human nature require ; and so God has 
regard, not of the human race only, hut of entire nature.y^ 

And, as a pendant to this denial by Spinoza of final 
causes, comes his stoicism : — 

'' Non studemus, ut natura nobis, sed contra ut nos 
naturae pareamus. {Our desire is not that nature may 
ohey us, hut, on the contrary, that ice may ohey nature.y 

Here is the second source of his attractiveness for 
Goethe ; and Goethe is but the eminent representative of 
a whole order of minds whose admiration has made Spi- 
noza's fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe and any man 
like Goethe, and then he composes him ; first he fills and 
satisfies his imagination by the width and grandeur of his 
view of nature, and then he fortifies and stills his mobile, 
straining, passionate poetic temperament by the moral 
lesson he draws from his view of nature. And a moral 
lesson not of mere resigned acquiescence, not of melan- 
choly quietism, but of joyful activity within the limits of 
man's true sphere : — 

^' Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo unusquisque 
suum esse conservare conatur. . . . Virtus hominis est 
ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus a solo conatu suum esse 
conservandi definitur. . . . Felicitas in eo consistit quod 
homo suum esse conservare potest. . . . Lsetitia est ho- 
minis transitio ad majorem perfectionem. . . . Tristitia 
est hominis transitio ad minorem perfectionem. {Man^s 
very essence is the effort ivhereivith each man strives to 
maintai^i his oivn hei7ig. . . . Man's virtue is this very 
essence, so far as it is defined hy this single effort to main- 
tain his own heing. . . . Happiness consists in a man's 
heing ahle to maintain his own heing. . . . Joy is man's 
passage to a greater perfection. . . . Sorroiu is man's 
passage to a lesser perfection. y 

It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand 
characteristic doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or truly 
Christian. His denial of final causes is essentially alien 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 247 

to the spirit of the Old Testament, and his cheerful and 
self-sufiBcing stoicism is essentially alien to the spirit of 
the New. The doctrine that "God directs nature, not 
according as the particular laws of human nature, but 
according as the universal laws of nature require," is at 
utter variance with that Hebrew mode of representing 
God's dealings, which makes the locusts visit Egypt to 
punish Pharaoh's hardness of heart, and the falling dew 
avert itself from the fleece of Gideon. The doctrine that 
'^all sorrow is a passage to a lesser perfection" is at utter 
variance with the Christian recognition of the blessedness 
of sorrow, working " repentance to salvation not to be 
repented of ; " of sorrow, which, in Dante's words, " re- 
marries us to God." 

Spinoza's repeated and earnest assertions that the love 
of God is man's siimmum lonum do not remove the funda- 
mental diversity between his doctrine and the Hebrew and 
Christian doctrines. By the love of God he does not mean 
the same thing which the Hebrew and Christian religions 
mean by the love of God. He makes the love of God to 
consist in the knowledge of God ; and, as we know God 
only through his manifestation of himself in the laws of 
all nature, it is by knowing these laws that we love God, 
and the more we know them the more we love him. This 
may be true, but this is not what the Christian means by 
the love of God. Spinoza's ideal is the intellectual life ; 
the Christian's ideal is the religious life. Between the 
two conditions there is all the dilference which there is 
between the being in love, and the following, with de- 
lighted comprehension, a reasoning of Plato. For Spinoza, 
undoubtedly, the crown of the intellectual life is a trans- 
port, as for the saint the crown of the religious life is a 
transport ; but the two transports are not the same. 

This is true ; yet it is true, also, that by thus crowning 
the intellectual life with a sacred transport, by thus re- 
taining in philosophy, amid the discontented murmurs of 
all the army of atheism, the name of God, Spinoza main- 
tains a profound affinity with that which is truest in re- 
ligion, and inspires an indestructible interest. One of his 



248 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

admirers, M. Van Vloten, has recently jDiiblished at Am- 
sterdam a supplementary volume to Spinoza's works, con- 
taining the interesting document of Spinoza's sentence of 
excommunication, from which I have already quoted, and 
containing, besides, several lately found works alleged to 
be Spinoza's, which seem to me to be of doubtful authen- 
ticity, and, even if authentic, of no great importance. 
M. Van Vloten (who, let me be permitted to say in pass- 
ing, writes a Latin which would make one think that the 
art of writing Latin must be now a lost art in the country 
of Lipsius) is very anxious that Spinoza's unscientific re- 
tention of the name of God should not afflict his readers 
with any doubts as to his perfect scientific orthodoxy : — 

" It is a great mistake," he cries, ^' to disparage Spinoza 
as merely one of the dogmatists before Kant. By keeping 
the name of God, while he did away with his person and 
character, he has done himself an injustice. Those who 
look to the bottom of things will see, that, long ago as he 
lived, he had even then reached the point to which the 
post-Hegelian philosophy and the study of natural science 
has only just brought our own times. Leibnitz expressed 
his apprehension lest those who did away with final causes 
should do away with God at the same time. But it is in 
his having done away with final causes, and with God along 
with them J that Spinoza's true merit consists." 

Now it must be remarked that to use Spinoza's denial of 
final causes in order to identify him with the Coryphaei of 
atheism, is to make a false use of Spinoza's denial of final 
causes, just as to use his assertion of the all-importance of 
loving God to identify him with the saints would be to 
make a false use of his assertion of the all-importance of 
loving God. He is no more to be identified with the post- 
Hegelian philosophers than he is to be identified with St. 
Augustine. Unction, indeed, Spinoza's writings have not ; 
that name does not precisely fit any quality which they 
exhibit. And yet, so all-important in the sphere of re- 
ligious thought is the power of edification, that in this 
sphere a great fame like Spinoza's can never be founded 
without it. A court of literature can never be very severe 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 249 

to Voltaire : with that inimitable wit and clear sense of 
his, he cannot write a page in which the fullest head may 
not find something suggestive : still, because, handling 
religious ideas, he yet, with all his wit and clear sense, 
handles them wholly without the power of edification, his 
fame as a great man is equivocal. Strauss has treated the 
question of Scripture miracles with an acuteness and ful- 
ness which even to the most informed minds is instructive ; 
but because he treats it almost wholly without the power 
of edification, his fame as a serious thinker is equivocal. 
But in Spinoza there is not a trace either of Voltaire's 

/ passion for mockery or of Strauss's passion for demolition. 

/ His whole soul was filled with desire of the love and knowl- 
edge of God, and of that only. Philosophy always pro- 
claims herself on the way to the summum honum ; but too 
often on the road she seems to forget her destination, and 
suffers her hearers to forget it also. Spinoza never forgets 
his destination : " The love of God is man's highest happi- 
ness and blessedness, and the final end and aim of all 
human actions;" — ''The supreme reward for keeping 
God's Word is that Word itself — namely, to know him and 
with free will and pure and constant heart love him : " 
these sentences are the keynote to all he produced, and 
were the inspiration of all his labors. This is why he 
turns so sternly upon the worshipers of the letter, — the 
editors of the Masora, the editor of the Record, — because 
their doctrine imperils our love and knowledge of God. 
"What !" he cries, ''our knowledge of God to depend 
upon these perishable things, which Moses can dash to the 
ground and break to pieces like the first tables of stone, or 
of which the originals can be lost like the original book of 
the Covenant, like the original book of the Law of God, 
like the book of the Wars of God ! . . . which can come to 
us confused, imperfect, mis- written by copyists, tampered 
with by doctors ! And you accuse others of impiety ! It 
is you who are impious, to believe that God would com- 
mit the treasure of the true record of himself to any sub- 
stance less enduring than the heart ! " 

And Spinoza's life was not unworthy of this elevated 



250 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

strain. A philosopher who professed that knowledge was 
its own reward, a devotee who professed that the love of 
God was its own reward, this philosopher and this devotee 
believed in what he said. Spinoza led a life the most spot- 
less, perhaps, to be found among the lives of philosophers ; 
he lived simple, studious, even-tempered, kind ; declining 
honors, declining riches, declining notoriety. He was 
poor, and his admirer Simon de Vries sent him two thou- 
sand florins : — he refused them. The same friend left 
him his fortune ; — he returned it to the heir. He was 
asked to dedicate one of his works to the magnificent 
patron of letters in his century, Louis the Fourteenth ; — 
he declined. His great work, his Ethics, published after 
his death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish 
anonymously, for fear he should give his name to a school. 
Truth, he thought, should bear no man's name. And 
finally, — "Unless," he said, *' I had known that my writ- 
ings would in the end advance the cause of true religion, 
I would have suppressed them, — tamiissern.'^ It was in 
this spirit that he lived ; and this spirit gives to all he 
writes not exactly unction, — I have already said so, — 
but a kind of sacred solemnity. Not of the same order as 
the saints, he yet follows the same service : Doubtless thou 
art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and 
Israel achnowledge us not. 

Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, and 
has inspired in many powerful minds an interest and an 
admiration such as no other philosopher has inspired since 
Plato. The lonely precursor of German philosophy, he 
still shines when the light of his successors is fading away ; 
they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame. Not because his 
peculiar system of philosophy has had more adherents than 
theirs ; on the contrary, it has had fewer. But schools of 
philosophy arise and fall ; their bands of adherents in- 
evitably dwindle ; no master can long persuade a large 
body of disciples that they give to themselves just the 
same account of the world as he does ; it is only the very 
young and the very enthusiastic who can think themselves 
sure that they possess the whole mind of Plato, or Spinoza, 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 251 

or Hegel, at all. The very mature and the very sober can 
even hardly believe that these philosophers possessed it 
themselves enough to put it all into their works, and to 
let us know entirely how the world seemed to them. What 
a remarkable philosopher really does for human thought, 
is to throw into circulation a certain number of new and 
striking ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with them 
the thought and imagination of his century or of after- 
times. So Spinoza has made his distinction between 
adequate and inadequate ideas a current notion for edu- 
cated Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant sentence 
of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking ap- 
plications, into the world of modern thought. But to do 
this is only enough to make a philosopher noteworthy ; it 
is not enough to make him great. To be great, he must 
have something in him which can influence character, 
which is edifying ; he must, in short, have a noble and 
lofty character himself, a character, — to recur to that 
much-criticised expression of mine, — in the grand style. 
This is Avhat Spinoza had ; and because he had it, he stands 
out from the multitude of philosophers, and has been able 
to inspire in powerful minds a feeling which the most re- 
markable philosophers, without this grandiose character, 
could not inspire. '' There is no possible view of life but 
Spinoza's," said Lessing. Goethe has told us how he was 
calmed and edified by him in his youth, and how he again 
went to him for support in his maturity. Heine, the man 
(in spite of his faults) of truest genius that Germany 
has produced since Goethe, — a man with faults, as 
I have said, immense faults, the greatest of them being 
that he could reverence so little, — reverenced Spinoza. 
Hegel's influence ran off him like water : *^ I have seen 
Hegel," he cries, '' seated with his doleful air of a hatch- 
ing hen upon his unhappy eggs, and I have heard his dis- 
mal clucking. How easily one can cheat oneself into 
thinking that one understands everything, when one has 
learned only how to construct dialectical formulas ! " But 
of Spinoza, Heine said : ^' His life was a copy of the life 
of his divine kinsman, Jesus Christ." 



252 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

And therefore, when M. Van Vloten violently presses 
the parallel with the post-Hegelians, one feels that the 
parallel with St. Augustine is the far truer one. Com- 
pared with the soldier of irreligion M. Van Vloten would 
have him to be, Spinoza is religious. ^' It is true," one 
may say to the wise and devout Christian, ^' Spinoza's 
conception of beatitude is not yours, and cannot satisfy 
you, but whose conception of beatitude would you ac- 
cept as satisfying ? Not even that of the devoutest of your 
fellow-Christians. Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most 
inspired of devout souls, has given us, in his great picture 
of the Last Judgment, his conception of beatitude. The 
elect are going round in a ring on long grass under laden 
fruit-trees ; two of them, more restless than the others, 
are flying up a battlemented street, — a street blank with 
all the ennui of the Middle Ages. Across a gulf is visible, 
for the delectation of the saints, a blazing caldron in which 
Beelzebub is sousing the damned. This is hardly more 
your conception of beatitude than Spinoza's is. But * in 
my Father's house are many mansions ; ' only, to reach 
any one of these mansions, there are needed the wings of a 
genuine sacred transport, of an * immortal longing.'" 
These wings Spinoza had ; and, because he had them, his 
own language about himself, about his aspirations and his 
course, are true : his foot is in the vera vita, his eye on 
the beati^c vkioa. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 253 



X. 

MARCUS AUKELIUS. 

Mr. Mill says, in his book on Liberty, that '* Christian 
morality is in great part merely a protest against pagan- 
ism ; its ideal is negative rather than positive, passive 
rather than active." He says, that, in certain most import- 
ant respects, '^ it falls far below the best morality of the an- 
cients/' Now, the object of systems of morality is to take 
possession of human life, to save it from being abandoned 
to passion or allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happi- 
ness by establishing it in the practice of virtue ; and this 
object they seek to attain by prescribing to human life 
fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. In its 
uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, in its days 
of languor and gloom as well as in its days of sunshine and 
energy, human life has thus always a clue to follow, and 
may always be making way towards its goal. Christian 
morality has not failed to supply to human life aids of this 
sort. It has supplied them far more abundantly than 
many of its critics imagine. The most exquisite document 
after those of the Xew Testament, of all the documents 
the Christian spirit has ever inspired, — the Imitation, — 
by no means contains the whole of Christian morality ; 
nay, the disparagers of this morality would think themselves 
sure of triumphing if one agreed to look for it in the 
Imitation only. But even the Imitation is full of pas- 
sages like these : ** Vita sine proposito languida et vaga 
est ; " — *' Omni die renovare debemus propositum nostrum, 
dicentes : nunc hodie perfecte incipiamus, quia nihil est 
quod hactenus fecimus ; " — "• Secundum propositum 
nostrum est cursus profectus nostri;" — ^^Raro etiam 
unum vitium perfecte vincimus, et ad qiiotidiamnn pro- 
fectum non accendimur;" "Semper aliquid certi pro- 



254: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

ponendum est ; " '' Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac ; " 
(A life witJiout a purpose is a languid, drifting thing ; — 
Every day we ought to renew our ^nirpose, saying to our- 
selves : This day let us make a sound beginning, for what 
loe have hitherto done is nought ; — Our improvement is in 
proportion to our purpose ; — We hardly ever manage to get 
completely rid even of one fault, and do not set our hearts 
on daily improvement ; — Always jjlace a definite purpose he- 
fore thee ; — Get the habit of mastering thine inclination.) 
These are moral precepts, and moral precepts of the best 
kind. As rules to hold possession of our conduct, and to 
keep us in the right course through outward troubles and 
inward perplexity, they are equal to the best ever furnished 
by the great masters of morals — Epictetus or Marcus 
Aurelius. 

But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then 
rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, for the sage 
only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intellect 
enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of 
character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The 
mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of 
hardship for the natural man, can be borne over the 
thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide 
of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to 
rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a 
sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that 
the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he 
can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet 
have borne it ! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor 
and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a 
relative inferiority ; the noblest souls of whatever creed, 
the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian Paul, have 
insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a joyful emotion, 
to make moral action perfect ; an obscure indication of 
this necessity is the one drop of truth in the ocean of ver- 
biage with which the controversy on justification by faith 
has flooded the world. But, for the ordinary man, this 
sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disquali- 
fication ; it paralyzes him ; under the weight of it, he 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 255 

cannot make way towards the goal at all. The paramount 
virtue of religion is, that it has lighted up morality ; that 
it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for 
carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for 
carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the re- 
ligious^ with most dross in them have had something of 
this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with 
unexampled splendor. *' Lead me, Zeus and Destiny ! " 
says the prayer of Epictetus, '' whithersoever I am ap- 
pointed to go ; I will follow without wavering ; even 
though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow 
all the same.'' The fortitude of that is for the strong, 
for the few ; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with 
which it surrounds them is bleak and gray, But, '* Let 
thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteous- 
ness ; " — '^ The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting 
light, and thy God thy glory ; " — " Unto you that fear 
my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing 
in his wings,'' says the Old Testament ; '^ Born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God ;" — ''^Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God ; " — '' Whatsoever is born of God, 
overcometh the world," says the New. The ray of sun- 
shine is there, the glow of a divine warmth ; — the auster- 
ity of the sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the 
weak is healed ; he who is vivified by it renews his strength ; 
'* all things are possible to him ; " ^^ he is anew creature." 
Epictetus says : '' Every matter has two handles, one 
of which will bear taking hold of, the other not. If thy 
brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the matter by 
this, that he sins against thee ; for by this handle the 
matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold 
of it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate ; and 
thou wilt take hold of it by what will bear handling." 
Jesus, being asked whether a man is bound to forgive his 
brother as often as seven times, answers : ^^I say not 
unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times 
seven." Epictetus here suggests to the reason grounds 
for forgiveness of injuries which Jesus does not ; but it is 



256 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

vain to say that Epictetus is on tliat account a better 
moralist than Jesos, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus's 
answer fires his hearer to the practice of forgiveness of 
injuries, while the thought in Epictetus's leaves him cold. 
So with Christian morality in general : its distinction is 
not that it propounds the maxim, '' Thou shalt love God 
and thy neighbor," with more development, closer reason- 
ing, truer sincerity, than other moral systems ; it is that 
it propounds this maxim with an inspiration which wonder- 
fully catches the hearer and makes him act upon it. It 
is because Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths 
of this nature, that he is, — instead of being, like the 
school from which he proceeds, doomed to sterility, — a 
writer of distinguished mark and influence, a writer de- 
serving all attention and respect ; it is (I must be pardoned 
for saying) because he is not sufficiently leavened with 
them, that he falls just short of being a great writer. 

That which gives to the moral writings of the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius their peculiar character and charm, is 
their being sufCused and softened by something of this 
very sentiment whence Christian morality draws its best 
power. Mr. Long has recently published in a convenient 
form a translation of these writings, and has thus enabled 
English readers to judge Marcus Aureliusfor themselves ; 
he has rendered his countrymen a real service by so doing. 
Mr. Long's reputation as a scholar is a sufficient guarantee 
of the general fidelity and accuracy of his translation ; on 
these matters, besides, I am hardly entitled to speak, and 
my praise is of no value. But that for which I and the 
rest of the unlearned may venture to praise Mr. Long is 
this ; that he treats Marcus Aurelius's writings, as he 
treats all the other remains of Greek and Roman antiquity 
which he touches, not as a dead and dry matter of learn- 
ing, but as documents with a side of modern applicability 
and living interest, and valuable mainly so far as this side 
in them can be made clear ; that as in his notes on Plu- 
tarch's Roman Lives he deals with the modern epoch of 
Caesar and Cicero, not as food for schoolboys, but as food 
for men, and men engaged in the current of contemporary 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 257 

life and action, so in his remarks and essays on Marcus 
Aurelins he treats this truly modern striver and thinker 
not as a Classical Dictionary hero, but as a present source 
from which to draw " example of life, and instruction of 
manners." Why may not a son of Dr. Arnold say, what 
might naturally here be said by any other critic, that in 
this lively and fruitful way of considering the men and 
affairs of ancient Greece and Kome, Mr. Long resembles 
Dr. Arnold ? 

One or two little complaints, however, I have against 
Mr. Long, and I will get them off my mind at once. In 
the first place, why could he not have found gentler and 
juster terms to describe tlie translation of his predecessor, 
Jeremy Collier, — the redoubtable enemy of stage plays, — 
than these : '' a most coarse and vulgar copy of the 
original ?" As a matter of taste, a translator should deal 
leniently with his predecessor ; but putting that out of 
the question, Mr. Long's language is a great deal too hard. 
Most English people who knew Marcus Aurelius before 
Mr. Long appeared as his introducer, knew him through 
Jeremy Collier. And the acquaintance of a man like 
Marcus Aurelius is such an imperishable benefit, that one 
can never lose a peculiar sense of obligation towards the 
man who confers it. Apart from this claim upon one's 
tenderness, however, Jeremy Collier's version deserves re- 
spect for its genuine spirit and vigor, the spirit and vigor 
of the age of Dryden. Jeremy Collier too, like Mr. Long, 
regarded in Marcus Aurelius the living moralist, and not 
the dead classic ; and his warmth of feeling gave to his 
style an impetuosity and rhythm which from Mr Long's 
style (I do not blame it on that account) are absent. Let 
us place the two side by side. The impressive opening 
of Marcus Aurelius's fifth book, Mr. Long translates 
thus : — 

" In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this 
thought be present : I am rising to the work of a human 
being. "Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do 
the things for which I exist and for which I was brought 
into the world ? Or have I been made for this, to lie in 



258 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the bed clothes and keep myself warm ? — But this is more 
pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and 
not at all for action or exertion ? " 

Jeremy Collier has : — 

^' When yon find an unwillingness to rise early in the 
morning, make this short speech to yourself : ^ I am getting 
up now to do the business of a man ; and am I out of 
humor for going about that which I was made for, and for 
the sake of which I was sent into the world ? Was I then 
designed for nothing but to doze and batten beneath the 
counterpane ? I thought action had been the end of your 
being.^ " 

In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long has : — 

'^ No longer wonder at hazard ; for neither wilt thou 
read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient Romans 
and Hellenes, and the selections from books which thou 
wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then to the end 
which thou hast before thee, and, throwing away idle 
hopes, come to thine own aid, if thou carest at all for thy- 
self, while it is in thy power." 

Here his despised predecessor has : — 

^' Don't go too far in your books and overgrasp your- 
self. Alas, you have no time left to peruse your diary, to 
read over the Greek and Roman history : come, don't flatter 
and deceive yourself ; look to the main chance, to the end 
and design of reading, and mind life more than notion : I 
say, if you have a kindness for your person, drive at the 
practice and help yourself, for that is in your own power." 

It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy Col- 
lier can (to say the least) perfectly stand comparison with 
Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier's real defect as a translator is 
not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his imperfect acquain- 
tance with Greek ; this is a serious defect, a fatal one ; 
it rendered a translation like Mr. Long's necessary. 
Jeremy Collier's work will now be forgotten, and Mr. 
Long stands master of the field ; but he may be content^ 
at any rate, to leave his predecessor's grave unharmed, 
even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, a handful oi 
kindly earth. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 259 

Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that 
he is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little 
formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say EtJiic and Dia- 
lectic, instead of Ethics and Dialectics, and to say '^ Hel- 
lenes and Komans " instead of ^' Greehs and Eomans." 
And why, too, — the name of Antoninus being preoccupied 
by Antoninus Pius, — will Mr. Long call his author Marcus, 
Antoninus instead of Marcus Atcreliusf Small as these 
matters appear, they are important when one has to deal 
with the general public, and not with a small circle of 
scholars ; and it is the general public that the translator 
of a short masterpiece on morals, such as is the book of 
Marcus Aurelius, should have in view ; his aim should be 
to make Marcus Aurelius's work as j)opular as the Imi- 
tation, and Marcus Aurelius's name as familiar as Soc- 
rates^s. In rendering or naming him, therefore, punc- 
tilious accuracy of phrase is not so much to be sought as 
accessibility and currency ; everything which may best 
enable the Emperor and his precepts vilotare per ora viriim. 
It is essential to render him in language perfectly plain 
and unprofessional, and to call him by the name by which 
he is best and m'ost distinctly known. The translators of 
the Bible talk oi ]jence and not denarii, and the admirers 
of Voltaire do not celebrate him under the name of Arouet. 

But, after these trifling comjjlaints are made, one must 
end, as one began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. Long 
for his excellent and substantial reproduction in English 
of an invaluable work. In general the substantiality, 
soundness, and precision of Mr. Long's rendering are (I 
will venture, after all, to give my opinion about them) as 
conspicuous as the living spirit with which he treats anti- 
quity ; and these qualities are particularly desirable in the 
translator of a work like that of Marcus Aurelius, of which 
the language is often corrupt, almost always hard and 
obscure. Any one who wants to appreciate Mr. Long^s 
merits as a translator may read, in the original and in Mr. 
Long's translation, the seventh chapter of the tenth book ; 
he will see how, through all the dubiousness and involved 
manner of the Greek, Mr. Long has firmly seized upon the 



26U ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

clear thought which is certainly at the bottom of that 
troubled wording, and, in distinctly rendering this thought, 
has at the same time thrown round its expression a char- 
acteristic shade of painfulness and difficulty which just 
suits it. And Marcus Aurelius's book is one which, when 
it is rendered so accurately as Mr. Long renders it, even 
those who know Greek tolerably well may choose to read 
rather in the translation than in the original. For not 
only are the contents here incomparably more valuable 
than the external form, but this form, the Greek of a 
Eoman, is not exactly one of those styles which have a 
physiognomy, which are an essential part of their author, 
which stamp an indelible impression of him on the reader's 
mind. An old Lyons commentator finds, indeed, in Mar- 
cus Aurelius's Greek, something characteristic, something 
specially firm and imperial ; but I think an ordinary mor- 
tal will hardly find this : he will find crabbed Greek, with- 
out any great charm of distinct physiognomy. The Greek 
of Thucydides and Plato has this charm, and he who reads 
them in a translation, however accurate, loses it, and loses 
much in losing it ; but the Greek of Marcus Aurelius, like 
the Greek of the New Testament, and even more than 
the Greek of the New Testament, is wanting in it. If 
one could be assured that the English Testament were 
made perfectly accurate, one might be almost content 
never to open a Greek Testament again ; and, Mr. Long's 
version of Marcus Aurelius being what it is, an English- 
man who reads to live, and does not live to read, may 
henceforth let the Greek original repose upon its shelf. 

The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faithfully 
reproduced, is perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. 
He is one of those consoling and hope-inspiring marks, 
which stand forever to remind our weak and easily dis- 
couraged race how high human goodness and perseverance 
have once been carried, and may be carried again. The 
interest of mankind is peculiarly attracted by examples 
of signal goodness in high places ; for that testimony to 
the worth of goodness is the most striking which is borne 
by those to whom all the means of pleasure and self-in- 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 261 

dulgence lay open, by those who had at their command 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Mar- 
cus Aurelins was the ruler of the grandest of empires ; and 
lie was one of the best of men. Besides him, history pre- 
sents one or two sovereigns eminent for their goodness, 
such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But Marcus Aurelius has, 
for us moderns, this great superiority in interest over Saint 
Lpuis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society 
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin 
to our own, in a brilliant center of civilization. Trajan 
talks of '^ our enlightened age " just as glibly as the Times 
talks of it. Marcus Aurelius thus becomes for us a man 
like ourselves, a man in all things tempted as we are. 
Saint Louis inhabits an atmosphere of mediaeval Catho- 
licism, which the man of the nineteenth century may ad- 
mire, indeed, may even passionately wish to inhabit, but 
which, strive as he will, he cannot really inhabit. Alfred 
belongs to a state of society (I say it with all deference to 
the Saturday Review critic who keeps such jealous watch 
over the honor of our Saxon ancestors) half barbarous. 
Neither Alfred nor Saint Louis can be morally and intel- 
lectually as near to us as Marcus Aurelius. 

The record of the outward life of this admirable man 
has in it little of striking incident. He was born at 
Rome on the 26th of April, in the year 121 of the Chris- 
tian era. He was nephew and son-in-law to his predecessor 
on the throne, Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died, he 
was forty years old, but from the time of his earliest man- 
hood he had assisted in administering public affairs. 
Then, after his uncle's death in 161, for nineteen years he 
reigned as emperor. The barbarians were pressing on the 
Roman frontier, and a great part of Marcus Aurelius's 
nineteen years of reign was passed in campaigning. His 
absences from Rome were numerous and long. We hear 
of him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece ; but, above 
all, in the countries on the Danube, where the war with 
the barbarians was going on,— in Austria, Moravia, 
Hungary. In these countries much of his Journal seems 
to have been written ; parts of it are dated from them ; and ' 



262 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

there, a few weeks before his fifty-ninth birthday, he fell 
sick and died. ^ The record of him on which his fame 
chiefly rests is the record of his inward life, — his Journal, 
or Commentaries, or Meditations, or Tlioughts, for by all 
these names has the work been called. Perhaps the most 
interesting of the records of his outward life is that which 
the first book of this work supplies, where he gives an ac- 
count of his education, recites the names of those to whom 
he is indebted for it, and enumerates his obligations to 
each of them. It is a refreshing and consoling picture, a 
priceless treasure for those, who, sick of the '' wild and 
dreamlike trade of blood and guile," which seems to be 
nearly the whole of what history has to offer to our view, 
seek eagerly for that substratum of right thinking and 
well-doing which in all ages must surely have somewhere 
existed, for without it the continued life of humanity 
would have been impossible. ^' From my mother I learnt 
piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil 
deeds but even from evil thoughts ; and further, sim- 
plicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits 
of the rich." Let us remember that, the next time 
we are reading the sixth satire of Juvenal. '' From my 
tutor I learnt " (hear it, ye tutors of princes ! ) " endurance 
of labor, and to want little and to work with my own 
hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and 
not to be ready to listen to slander." The vices and 
foibles of the Greek sophist or rhetorician — the Grcec^ilus 
esuriens — are in everybody's mind ; but he who reads 
Marcus Aurelius's account of his Greek teachers and 
masters, will understand how it is that, in spite of the 
vices and foibles of individual Grceculi, the education of 
the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be 
overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history leaves 
on the mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius : it 
is only from the private memoranda of his nephew that 
we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, 
virtuous man he was ; a man who, perhaps, interests man- 

1 He died on the 17th of March, a. d. 180. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 263 

kind less than his immortal nephew only because he has 
left in writing no record of his inner life, — caret quia vate 
sacro. 

Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus 
Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself sup- 
plied, there are few of much interest and importance. 
There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard of 
the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius, against 
whom he was marching ; he tuas soiTif, he said, to he de- 
prived of the pleasure of pardoning him. And there are 
one or two more anecdotes of him which show the same 
spirit. But the great record for the outward life of a man 
who has left such a record of his lofty inward aspirations 
as that which Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear con- 
senting voice of all his contemporaries, — high and low, 
friend and enemy, pagan and Christian, — in praise of his 
sincerity, justice, and goodness. The world's charity does 
not err on the side of excess, and here was a man occupy- 
ing the most conspicuous station in the world, and pro- 
fessing the highest possible standard of conduct ; — yet the 
world was obliged to declare that he walked worth- 
ily of his profession. Long after his death, his bust 
was to be seen in the houses of private men through the 
wide Roman empire. It may be the vulgar part of human 
nature which busies itself with the semblance and doings 
of living sovereigns, it is its nobler part which busies itself 
with those of the dead ; these busts of Marcus Aurelius, 
in the homes of Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bear witness, 
not to the inmates' frivolous curiosity about princes and 
palaces, but to their reverential memory of the passage of 
a great man upon the earth. 

Two things, however, before one turns from the out- 
ward to the inward life of Marcus Aurelius, force them- 
selves upon one's notice, and demand a word of comment ; 
he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son the 
vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at 
Lyons, in which Attains and Pothinus suffered, the perse- 
cution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp suffered, took place 



264 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

in his reign. Of his humanity, of his tolerance, of his 
horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain from 
severe measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to 
temper the severity of these measures when they appeared 
to him indispensable, there is no doubt : but, on the one 
hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to him, 
directing that no Christian should be punished for being 
a Christian, is spurious ; it is almost certain that his 
alleged answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he 
directs that Christians persisting m their profession shall 
be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. Long 
seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the persecu- 
tion at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter of the Lyons 
Christians relating it, alleges it to have been attended by 
miraculous and incredible incidents. '^ A man," he says, 
" can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or 
rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either." 
But it is contrary to all experience to say that because a 
fact is related with incorrect additions, and embellish- 
ments, therefore it probably never happened at all ; or 
that it is not, in general, easy for an impartial mind to 
distinguish between the fact and the embellishments. ,1 
cannot doubt that the Lyons persecution took place, and 
that the punishment of Christians for being Christians 
was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. But then I must add 
that nine modern readers out of ten, when they read this, 
will, I believe, have a perfectly false notion of what the 
moral action of Marcus Aurelius, in sanctioning that pun- 
ishment, really was. They imagine Trajan, or Antoninus 
Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh from the perusal of the 
Gospel, fully aware of the spirit and holiness of the Chris- 
tian saints ordering their extermination because he loved 
darkness rather than light. Far from this, the Christian- 
ity which these emperors aimed at repressing was, in their 
conception of it, something philosophically contemptible, 
politically subversive, and morally abominable. As men, 
they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned peo- 
ple, with us, regard Mormonism ; as rulers, they regarded 
it much as Liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 265 

A kind of Mormonism, constituted as a vast secret society, 
with obscure aims of political and social subversion, v/as 
what Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed them- 
selves to be repressing when they punished Christians. 
The early Christian apologists again and again declare to 
iis under what odious imputations the Christians lay, how 
general was the belief that these imputations were well- 
o^rouuded, how sincere was the horror which the belief in- 
spired. The multitude, convinced that the Christians 
were atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no 
crime, displayed against them a fury so passionate as to em- 
barrass and alarm their rulers. The severe expressions of 
Tacitus, exitiatilis super stitio — odio humani generis con- 
victi, show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude 
imbued the educated class also. One asks oneself with 
astonishment how a doctrine so benign as that of Jesus 
Christ can have incurred misrepresentation so monstrous. 
The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, 
no doubt, in this, — that Christianity was a new spirit in 
the Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dis- 
solvent ; and it was inevitable that Christianity in the 
Roman world, like democracy in the modern world, like 
every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it, 
should at its first appearance occasion an instinctive 
shrinking and repugnance in the world which it was to 
dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the misrepre- 
sentation were, for the Roman public at large, the con- 
founding of the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, 
fierce, and stubborn race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, 
and isolation, real as they were, the fancy of a civilized 
Roman yet further exaggerated ; the atmosphere of 
mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites ; 
the very simplicity of Christian theism. For the Roman 
statesman, the cause of mistake lay in that character of 
secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian 
community wore, under a State-system as jealous of un- 
authorized associations as in the State-system of modern 
France. 
A Roman of Marcus. Aurelius's time and position could 



266 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

not well see the Christians except through the mist of 
these prejudices. Seen through such a mist, the Chris- 
tians appeared with a thousand faults not their own ; but 
it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults really 
their own maoy of them assuredly appeared with besides, 
faults especially likely to strike such an observer as Mar- 
cus Aurelius, and to confirm him in the prejudices of his 
race, station, and rearing. We look back upon Christian- 
ity after it has proved what a future it bore within it, and 
for us the sole representatives of its early struggles arc the 
pure and devoted spirits through whom it proved this ; 
Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future yet unshown, and 
with the tares among its professed progeny not less con- 
spicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt that among the 
professing Christians of the second century, as among the 
professing Christians of the nineteenth, there was plenty 
of folly, plenty of rabid nonsense, plenty of gross fanati- 
cism ? who will even venture to affirm that, separated in 
great measure from the intellect and civilization of the 
world for one or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as 
have been its fruits, had the development perfectly worthy 
of its inestimable germ ? Who will venture to affirm that, 
by the alliance of Christianity with the virtue and intelli- 
gence of men like the Antonines, — of the best product of 
Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman 
civilization had yet life and power, — Christianity and the 
world, as well as the Antonines themselves, would not 
have been gainers ? That alliance was not to be. The 
Antonines lived and died with an utter misconception of 
Christianity ; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not 
on the Palatine. And Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral 
reproach by having authorized the punishment of the 
Christians ; he does not thereby become in the least what 
we mean by a ])ersecutor. One may concede that it was 
impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was ; — 
as impossible as for even the moderate and sensible Fleury 
to see the Antonines as they really were ; — one may con- 
cede that the point of view from which Christianity ap- 
peared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the State 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 267 

had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was in- 
evitably his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, 
who made perfection his aim and reason his law, did Chris- 
tianity an immense injustice and rested in an idea of 
State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in truth, 
characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, 
yet, in a certain sense, unfortunate ; in his character, 
beautiful as it is, there is something melancholy, circum- 
scribed, and ineffectual. 

For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one 
must say that he is not to be blamed on that account, but 
that he is unfortunate. Disposition and temperament are 
inexplicable things ; there are natures on which the best 
education and example are thrown away ; excellent fathers 
may have, without any fault of theirs, incurably vicious 
sons. It is to be remembered, also, that Commodus was 
left, at the perilous age of nineteen, master of the world ; 
while his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty 
years' apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, 
under the sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. 
Commodus was a prince apt to be led by favorites ; and 
if the story is true which says that he left, all through his 
reign, the Christians untroubled, and ascribes this lenity 
to the influence of his mistress Marcia, it shows that he 
could be led to good as well as to evil. But for such a 
nature to be left at a critical age with absolute power, and 
wholly without good counsel and direction, was the more 
fatal. Still one cannot help wishing that the example of 
Marcus Aurelius could have availed more with his own 
only son. One cannot but think that with such virtue as 
his there should go, too, the ardor which removes moun- 
tains, and that the ardor which removes mountains might 
have even won Commodus. The word iiieffectual again 
rises to one's mind ; Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul 
by his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy 
they who can do this ! but still happier, who can do more ! 

Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward 
life, when one turns over the pages of his Meditations, — 
entries jotted down from day to day, amid the business of 



268 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his own guidance 
and support, meant for no eye but his own, without the 
slightest attempt at style, with no care, even, for correct 
writing, not to be surpassed for naturalness and sincerity, 
— all disposition to carp and cavil dies away, and one is 
overpowered by the charm of a character of such purity, 
delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things nor 
in great ; he keeps watch over himself both that the great 
springs of action maybe right in him, and that the minute 
details of action may be right also. How admirable in a 
hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler too, with a passion for think- 
ing and reading, is such a memorandum as the follow- 
ing :— 

*' Not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, 
or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure ; nor continu- 
ally to excuse the neglect of duties required by our rela- 
tion to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent oc- 
cupation." 

And, when that ruler is a Eoman emperor, what an 
** idea " is this to be written down and meditated by him : — 

''The idea of a polity in which there is the same law 
for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights 
and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly gov- 
ernment which respects most of all the freedom of the 
governed." 

And, for all men who '' drive at practice," what practical 
rules may not one accumulate out of these Meditations : — 

*' The greatest part of what we say or do being unneces- 
sary, if a man takes this away, he will have more leisure 
and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every occasion a man 
should ask himself : ' Is this one of the unnecessary 
things ? ' Now a man should take away not only unneces- 
sary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for thus superflu- 
ous acts will not follow after." 

And again : — 

'' We ought to check in the series of our thoughts every- 
thing that is without a purpose and useless, but most of 
all the over curious feeling and the malignant ; and a man 
should use himself to think of those things only about 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 269 

which if one should suddenly ask, ' What hast thou now 
in thy thoughts ? ' with perfect openness thou mightest im- 
mediately answer, ' This or That ; ' so that from thy words 
it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and 
benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one that 
cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any 
rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which 
thou wouldst blush if thou shouldst say thou hadst it in 
thy mind/' 

So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he 
discourses on his favorite text. Let notliing he done luitlioiit 
a purpose. But it is when he enters the region where 
Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his thoughts 
on the ground-motives of human action, that he is most 
interesting ; that he becomes the unique, the incompar- 
able Marcus Aiirelius. Christianity uses language very 
liable to be misunderstood when it seems to tell men to do 
good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly 
interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but ^' that 
their Father which seeth in secret may reward them 
openly." The motives of reward and punishment have 
come, from the misconception of language of this kind, 
to be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, 
to the deterioration and disfigurement of Christianity. 
Marcus Aurelius says, truly and nobly : — 

" One man, when he has done a service to another, is 
ready to set it down to his account as a favor conferred. 
Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind 
he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he 
has done. A third in a manner does not even know what 
he has done, hut lie is like a vine icliich has produced 
grapes, and seehs for notlmig more after it lias once pro- 
duced its proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog 
when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its 
honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call 
out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another 
act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season. 
Must a man, then, be one of these, who in a manner acts 
thus without observing it ? Yes." 



270 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

And again : — 

^* What more dost thou want when thou hast done a 
man a service ? Art thou not content that thou hast 
done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou 
seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye de7nanded a recom- 
pense for seeing, or the feet for ivalhioig ?" 

Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, 
has to correct its apparent offers of external reward, and 
to say : The hingdom of God is within you. 

I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the 
morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, 
and reminds one of Christian morality. The sentences of 
Seneca are stimulating to the intellect ; the sentences of 
Epictetus are fortifying to the character ; the sentences 
of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have said 
that religious emotion has the power to light up morality : 
the emotion of Marcus Aurelius does not quite light up 
his morality, but it suffuses it ; it has not power to melt 
the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, but it shines 
through them and glorifies them ; it is a spirit, not so 
much of gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweet- 
ness ; a delicate and tender sentiment, which is less than 
joy and more than resignation. He says that in his youth 
he learned from Maximus, one of his teachers, '' cheerful- 
ness in all circumstances as well as in illness ; arid a just 
admixture i7i the 7)ioral character of siveettiess a7id dig- 
nity : " and it is this very admixture of sweetness with his 
dignity which makes him so beautiful a moralist. It 
enables him to carry even into his observation of nature, 
a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy 
of Wordsworth ; the spirit of such a remark as the follow- 
ing has hardly a parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, 
in the whole range of Greek and Roman literature : — 

'^ Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open ; and in the 
ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to 
rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the 
ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and 
the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and 
many other things, — though they are far from being beau- 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 271 

tiful, in a certain sense,— still, because they come in the 
course of nature, have a beauty in them, and they please 
the mind ; so that if a man should have a feeling and a deeper 
insight with respect to the things which are produced in the 
universe, there is hardly anything which comes in the 
course of nature which will not seem to him to be in a 
manner disposed so as to give pleasure." 

But it is when his strain passes to directly moral sub- 
jects that his delicacy and sweetness lend to it the greatest 
charm. Let those who can feel the beauty of spiritual 
refinement read this, the reflection of an emperor who 
prized mental superiority highly : — 

^' Thou sayest, * Men cannot admire the sharpness of 
thy wits,' Be it so ; but there are many other things of 
which thou canst not say, ' I am not formed for them by 
nature.' Show those qualities, then, which are altogether 
in thy power, — sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, 
aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and 
with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of super- 
fluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou 
not see how many qualities thou art at once able to exhibit, 
as to which there is no .excuse of natural incapacity and 
unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below 
the mark ? Or art thou compelled, through being de- 
fectively furnished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, 
and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to 
try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so 
restless in thy mind ? No, indeed ; but thou mightest 
have been delivered from these things long ago. Only, if 
in truth thou canst be charged with being rather slow 
and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thyself about 
this also, not neglecting nor yet taking pleasure in thy 
dulness." 

The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, 
when he sees the isolation and moral death caused by 
sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery of this 
condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is 
blest with the power to escape from it : — 

'* Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the 



272 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

natural unity, — for thou wast made by nature a part, but 
now thou hast cut thyself off, — yet here is this beautiful 
provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. 
God has allowed this to no other part, — after it has been 
separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But 
consider the goodness with which he has privileged man ; 
for he has put it in his power, when he has been separated, 
to return and to be united and to resume his place." 

It enables him to control even the passion for retreat 
and solitude, so strong in a soul like his, to which the 
world could offer no abiding city : — 

'' Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the country, 
seashores, and mountains ; and thou, too, art wont to 
desire such things very much. But this is altogether a 
mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy 
power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. 
For no where either with more quiet or more freedom from 
trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly 
when he has witliin him such thoughts that by looking into 
them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. Constantly, 
then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself ; and 
let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which as soon 
as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse 
the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all 
discontent with the things to which thou returnest." 

Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so 
natural to the great for whom there seems nothing left to 
desire or to strive after, but so enfeebling to them, so 
deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased to struggle. 
With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance the 
blessings of his lot ; the true blessings of it, not the 
false : — 

*'I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a 
ruler and a father (Antoninus Pius) who was able to take 
away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge 
that it is possible for a man to live in a palace without 
either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any show of this 
kind ; but that it is in such a man's power to bring him- 
self very near to the fashion of a private person, without 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 273 

being for this reason either meaner in thought or more 
remiss in action with respect to the things which must be 
done for public interest. ... I have to be thankful that 
my children have not been stupid nor deformed in bod}- ; 
that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, 
and the other studies, by which I should perhaps have 
been completely engrossed, if I had seen that I was mak- 
ing great progress in them ; . . . that I knew Apollonius, 
Rasticus, Maximus ; . . . that I received clear and fre- 
quent impressions about living according to nature, and 
what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as depended on 
Heaven, and its gifts, help, and inspiration, nothing hin- 
dered me from forthwith living according to nature, 
though I still fall short of it through my own fault, and 
through not observing the admonitions of Heaven, and, I 
may almost say, its direct instructions ; that my body has 
held out so long in such a kind of life as mine ; that 
though it was my mother's lot to die young, she spent the 
last years of her life with me ; that whenever I wished to 
help any man in his need, I was never told that T had not 
the means of doing it ; that, when I had an inclination to 
philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist." 

And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these heljDS and 
blessings vouchsafed to him, his mind (so, at least, it 
seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the 
perils and temptations of the lonely height where he stood, 
to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, in their 
hideous blackness and ruin ; and then he wrote down 
for himself such a warning entry as this, significant and 
terrible in its abruptness : — 

*' A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn 
character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, 
scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical l'^ 

Or this :— 

^' About what am I now employing my soul ? On every 
occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire. 
What have I now in this part of me which they call the 
ruling principle, and whose soul have I now ? — that of a 
child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a 



'274: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

tyrant, or of one of the lower animals in the service of 
man, or of a wild beast ? " 

The character he wished to attain he knew well, and 
beautifully he has marked it, and marked, too his sense 
of shortcoming : — 

'^ When thou hast assumed these names,^good, modest, 
true, rational, equal-minded, magnanimous, — take care 
that thou dost not change these names ; and, if thou 
shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou 
maintainest thyself in possession of these names without 
desiring that others should call thee by them, thou wilt 
be another being, and wilt enter on another life. For to 
continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be 
torn in pieces and defiled in such a life, is the character of 
a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like 
those half -devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though 
covered with wounds and gore still entreat to be kept to 
the following day, though they will be exposed in the 
same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix 
thyself in the possession of these few names : and if thou 
art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed 
to the Happy Islands." 

For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man's point 
of life " between two infinities " (of that expression Marcus 
Aurelius is the real owner) was to him anything but a 
Happy Island, and the performances on it he saw through 
no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more gloomy 
and monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and 
transitoriness of human life and grandeur: but here, too, 
the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes 
in to relieve the monotony and to break tlirough the 
gloom ; and even on this eternally used topic he is imagi- 
native, fresh, and striking : — 

^'Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou 
wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up 
children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, cul- 
tivating the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, sus- 
pecting, plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling 
about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 275 

to be consuls or kings. Well then that life of these peo- 
ple no longer exists at all. Again, go to the times of 
Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too is gone. 
But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast 
thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, 
neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper 
constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content 
with it." 

Again : — 

*' The things which are much valued in life are empty, 
and rotten, and trifling ; and people are like little dogs, 
biting one another, and little children quarreling, crying, 
and then straightway laughing. But fidelity, and mod- 
esty, and justice, and truth, are fled 

' Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.' 

What then is there which still detains thee here ?" 

And once more : — 

^^ Look down from above on the countless herds of men, 
and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied 
voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among 
those who are born, who live together, and die. And 
consider too tiie life lived by others in olden time, and 
the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how 
many know not even thy name, and how many will soon 
forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising thee 
will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous 
name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.'^ 

He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) " the 
prime principle in man's constitution is the social ; " and 
he labored sincerely to make not only his acts towards his 
fellow-men, but his thoughts also, suitable to this convic- 
tion : — 

''When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the 
virtues of those who live with thee ; for instance, the ac- 
tivity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liber- 
ality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth." 

Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in 
a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his 



276 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

fellow-creatures ; above all it is hard, when such a man is 
placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, and has had the 
meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures thrust, in 
no common measure, upon his notice, — has had, time after 
time, to experience how ^' within ten days thou wilt seem 
a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape." 
His true strain of thought as to his relations with his fellow- 
men is rather the following. He has been enumerating 
the higher consolations which may support a man at the 
approach of death, and he goes on : — 

'^ But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort 
which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best recon- 
ciled to death by observing the objects from which thou 
art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom 
thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right 
to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them 
and to bear with them gently ; and yet to remember that 
thy departure will not be from men who have the same 
principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there 
be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach 
us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the 
same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how 
great is the distress caused by the difference of those who 
live together, so that thou mayest say : * Come quick, 
death, lest perchance I too should forget myself. ''' 

faithless mid perverse generation ! ho lo long shall I he 
with you ? hoiv long shall I suffer you 9 Sometimes this 
strain rises even to passion : — 

*' Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live 
as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know, a real 
man, who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot 
endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to 
live as men do." 

It is remarkable how little of a merely local and tempo- 
rary character, how little of those scorim which a reader 
has to clear away before he gets to the precious ore, how 
little that even admits of doubt or question, the morality 
of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as to one point we 
must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond of 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 277 

urging as a motive for man^s cheerful acquiescence in what- 
ever befalls him, that '^ whatever happens to every man is 
for the interest of the universal ; '' that the whole contains 
nothing luhich is not for its advantage ; that everything 
which happens to a man is to be accepted, '* even if it 
seems disagreeable, because it leads to the health of the uni- 
\verse.'^ And the whole course of the universe, he adds, has 
'a providential reference to man's welfare: "all other 
' things have been made for the sake of rational beings. " Re- 
ligion has in all ages freely used this language, and it is 
not religion which will object to Marcus Aurelius's use 
of it ; but science can hardly accept as severely accurate 
this employment of the terms interest and advantage. To 
a sound nature and a clear reason the proposition that 
things happen " for the interest of the universal," as men 
conceive of interest, may seem to have no meaning at 
all, and the proposition that ^^all things have been made 
for the sake of rational beings " may seem to be false. Yet 
even to this language, not irresistibly cogent when it is 
thus absolutely used, Marcus Aurelins gives a turn which 
makes it true and useful, when he says : " The ruling 
part of man can make a material for itself out of that 
which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, 
and rises higher by means of this very material ; " — 
when he says : " AYhat else are all things except exercises 
for the reason? Persevere then until thou shalt have 
made all things thine own, as the stomach which is strength- 
ened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes 
flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown 
into it ; " — when he says : " Thou wilt not cease to be 
miserable till thy mind is in such a condition, that, what 
luxury is to those who enjoy pleasure, such shall be to 
thee, in every matter which presents itself, the doing of 
the things which are conformable to man's constitution ; 
for a man ought to consider as an enjoyment everything 
which it is in his power to do according to his own nature, 
— and it is in his power everywhere." In this sense it is, 
indeed, most true that •' all things have been made for the 
sake of rational beings;" that *'all things work together 
for good/' 



278 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius pre- 
scribes is action which every sound nature must recognize 
as right, and the motives he assigns are motives which 
every clear reason must recognize as valid. And so he re- 
mains the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed 
and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward striving men, 
in those ages most especially that walk by sight, not by 
faith, but yet have no open vision. He cannot give such 
souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much ; 
and what he gives them, they can receive. 

Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such 
souls love him most ! it is rather because of the emotion 
which lends to his voice so touching an accent, it is because 
he too yearns as they do for something unattained by him. 
What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor of the 
Christians ! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving 
tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one 
feels, for which his soul longed ; they were near him, they 
brushed him, he touched them, he passed them by. One 
feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one reads must still 
have remained, even had Christianity been fully known to 
him, in a great measure himself ; he would have been no 
Justin ; — but how would Christianity have affected him ? 
in what measure would it have changed him ? Granted 
that he might have found, like the Alogiot modern times, 
in the most beautiful of the Gospels, the Gospel which 
has leavened Christendom most powerfully, the Gospel of 
St. John, too much Greek metaphysics, too much gnosis ; 
granted that this Gospel might have looked too like what 
he knew already to be a total surprise to him : what, then, 
would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the 
twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew ? What would have 
become of his notions of the exitiabilis superstitio, of the 
'^obstinacy of the Christians*^ ? Vain question ! yet the 
greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes 'us 
ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, 
thankful, blameless ; yet, with all this, agitated, stretch- 
ing out his arms for something beyond, — tendentemque 
manus rijpm titerioris amove. 



XI. 

THE STUDY OF POETRY.* 

" The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, 
where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time 
goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is 
not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma 
which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tra- 
dition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion 
has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact ; it 
has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is 
failing it. But. foiLpoetry thejjdeaj^e^v^^^^^^^ the rest 

is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches 
i^ts__emiitioj]L±aJih£_icleaj the idea is the fact. The strong- 
est part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry." 

Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, 
as uttering the thought which should, in my opinion, go 
with us and govern us in all our study of poetry. In the 
present work it is the course of one great contributory 
stream to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to 
follow. We are here invited to trace the stream of English 
poetry. But whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow 
only one of the several streams that make the mighty 
river of poetry, or whether we seek to know them all, our 
governing thought should be the same. We should con- 
ceive of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been 
the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as 
capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, 
than those which in general men have assigned to it 

1 Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to The English 
Poets, edited by T. H. Ward. 

279 



280 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we 
have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, 
to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear in- 
complete ; and most of what now passes with us for religion 
and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. Science, I say, 
will appear incomplete without it. For finely and truly 
does Wordsworth call poetry " the impassioned expression 
which is in the countenance of all science " ; and what is 
a countenance without its expression ? Again, Words- 
worth finely and truly calls poetry " the breath and finer 
spirit of all knowledge ^' : our religion, parading evidences 
such as those on which the popular mind relies now ; our 
philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about causa- 
tion and finite and infinite being ; what are they but the 
shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge ? The 
day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves for hav- 
ing trusted to them, for having taken them seriously ; and 
the more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall 
prize ^^ the breath and finer spirit of knowledge " offered to 
us by poetry. 

But if we conceive thushighly of the destinies of poetry, 
we must also setoiixatand^ird-ior poetryhigh, since poetry, 
to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be 
poetry of a high order of excellence. We must accustom 
ourselves to a high standard and to a strict judgment. 
Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when 
somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan : 
^' Charlatan as much as you please ; but where is there not 
charlatanism ?^' — ^' Yes," answers Sainte-Beuve, '^ in poli- 
tics, in the art of governing mankind, that is perhaps 
true. But in the order of thought, in art, the glory, the 
eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance ; 
herein lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man's 
being." It is admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. 
Injpoetry^_jwiiich_2iJ^^^ ought and art in one^ jt is the fflory, 
the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find no ,en- 
trance ; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and invio- 
lable Charlatanisni js for confusi ng or obliterating the dis- 
tinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 281 

or only half-sound, true and nntrue or only half-true. It is 
charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, whenever we con- 
fuse or obliterate these. And in p oe try, more than any- 
where else, i^is unp^niissihlg, to confuse or o bliterate 
them. For in poetry the distinctj^ Jietwfsen excellent 
and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true 
and untrue or only half-true, is-xDi^paraiiiQimtiirLpoiitan^ce. 
It is of paramount importance because^oliliaJiighdestinies 
of poetry. In poetr y, a^s^acjdMdsmofJjfe under the con- 
djtions__fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic 
tru th and poe tigJieflJity, the spirit of aur_race- wilLfindj 
we have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its 
cons olation a nd stay. But jthe_CQiisolation and stay will 
be of pow erjnjoropor tion to th e power of the criticism of 
life. A nd the critic is m of lif e^wjn JhHftjr)fjif^ 
portion as the po etry, conveying it is excellent rather than 
inferior, sound rather than unsound or Ealf-sound, true 
rather than untrue or half-true. 

The best poetry is what we want ; the best poetry will 
be foun d_to have a power__of^forming, s ustain ing, and de- 
lightiiLgjaSj_a^njp^hing else can. A clearer, deeper sense 
of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be 
drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can 
gather from a poetical collection such as the present. And 
yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collection 
there^i s inevi bably^ometEing_wEIglLfes^^ to_ o^bscure in us 
the conscious iiess of w jiai_rmx-JafinMt shot^ld^be, and_tQ 
distrac t us fromj the_.piirsuit o_f it. We should Therefore 
steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should 
compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it 
as we proceed. 

Yes ; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best,! 
the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be 
drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should 
goverB^jmt—estimate of what, wfi^ read. But this real 
estimate, the only true one, is liable to be supersejied, if 
we are not watchful, by_ tjm_iltlL£rJdiidS-- o^^ the 

historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which 
are~IaITacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historic- 



282 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

ally, they may count to us on grounds personal to our- 
selves, and they may count to us really. They may count 
to us historically. The course of development of a nation's 
language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting ; 
and by regarding a poet's work as a stage in this course of 
development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of 
more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we 
may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise 
in criticising it ; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in 
our poetic judgments the fallacy .caus£d_by-Jihe estimate 
which we may call historic. Then, again, a poet or a poem 
may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. Our 
personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have great 
power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work, 
and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry 
than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has 
been, of high importance. Here also we over-rate the 
object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise 
which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source 
of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments — the fallacy 
caused by an estimate which we may call personal. 

Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally 
the study of the history and development of a poetry may 
incline a man to pause over reputations and works once 
conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a care- 
less public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition 
and habit, from one famous name or work in its national 
poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the 
reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole 
process of growth in its poetry. The French have be- 
come diligent students of their own early poetry, which 
they long neglected ; the study makes many of them dis- 
satisfied with their so-called classical poetry, the court- 
tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellis- 
son long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic 
stamp, with its politesse sterile et ramjpante, but which 
nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it 
had been the perfection of classical poetry indeed. The 
dissatisfaction is natural ; yet a lively and accomplished 



TaE STUDY OF POETRY. 283 

critic, M. Charles d'Hericault, the editor of Clement 
Marot, goes too far when he says that *' the cloud of glory- 
playing round a classic is a mist as dangerous to the 
future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes 
of history/^ *^ It hinders," he goes on, -^it hinders us 
from seeing more than one single point, the culmina- 
ting and exceptional point ; the summary, fictitious and 
arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It substitutes a 
halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was 
once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor, the 
attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study 
but veneration ; it does not show us how the thing is 
done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the 
historian this creation of classic personages is inadmissi- 
ble; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his 
proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds 
criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the in- 
vestigation of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us 
a human personage no longer, but a God seated immovable 
amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus ; and 
hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom 
such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to 
believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine 
head." 

All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must 
plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the 
reality of a poet's classic character. If he is a dubious 
classic, let us sift him ; if he is a false classic, let us ex- 
plode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs 
to the.class of the very best (for this is the true and right 
meaning of the word classic, classical), then the great 
thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever 
we can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it 
and all work which has not the same high character. This 
is what is salutary, this is what is formative ; this is the 
great benefit to be got from the study of poetry. Every- 
thing which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injuri- 
ous. True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and 
not with eyes blinded with superstition ; we must perceive 



i^84 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

when his work comes short, when it drops out of the class 
of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its 
proper value. But the use of this negative .criticism is 
not in itself, it' is entirely in its enabling us to have a 
clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly ex- 
cellent. To trace the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, 
the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint oneself with 
his time and his life and his historical relationships, is 
mere literary dilettantism unless it has that clear sense 
and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that 
the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy 
him ; and, if we lived as long as Metliuselah and had all 
of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect stead- 
fastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in 
theory. But the case here is much the same as the case 
with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The 
elaborate philological groundwork which we require them 
to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciat- 
ing the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more 
thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be 
able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. Trne, if time 
were not so short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired 
and their power of attention exhausted ; only, as it is, the 
elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors 
are little known and less enjoyed. So with the iiivestiga- 
tor of _1' historic origins " in poetry. He ought to enjoy 
the true classic all the better for his investigations ; he 
often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and 
with the less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to 
over-rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost 
him. 

The idea of tracing historic origins and historical rela- 
tionships cannot be absent from a compilation, like the 
present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it 
will be assigned to those persons for exhibition who are 
known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have 
no special inclination towards them. Moreover the very 
occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting 
him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 285 

the present work, therefore, we are snre of frequent 
temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal 
estimate, and to forget the real estimate ; which latter, 
nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry 
yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the bene- 
fit of clearly_ f eelijig and of deeply enjoying the really ex- 
cellent, the truly classic in poetry, tliat we do well, 1 say, 
to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying 
po'ets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it 
the one principle to which, as the Imitation says, what- 
ever we may read or come to know, we always return. 
Cum miilta legeris et cognoveris, ad U7ium semjoer ojiortet 
redire princijniun. 

The historic^ estimate is likely in especial to affect 
our judgment and our language when we are deal- 
ing with ancient poets ; the personal estimate when we 
are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate 
modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate 
are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. 
Their report hardly enters the general ear ; probably they 
do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt 
them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. 
So we hear Csedmon, amongst our own poets, compared 
to Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one 
accomplished French critic for ^"'historic origins." An- 
other eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments upon 
that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, 
the Chanson de Roland. It is indeed a most interesting 
document. The joculato?^ ov jongleur Taillefer, who was 
with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched 
before the N'orman troops, so said the tradition, singing 
^* of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of 
the vassals who died at Roncevaux ; " and it is suggested 
tliat in the Chanson de Roland by one Turoldus or 
Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the 
twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we 
have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the 
words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has 
vigor and freshness ; it is not without pathos. But M. 



286 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some 
poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic 
value ; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monu- 
ment of epic genius. In its general design he finds the 
g randios e conception, in its details he finds the. constant 
union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, 
he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from 
the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; 
this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and 
justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it 
is the praise due to epic pqetij^ of theM^hest prde.r_onl^ 
and to no other. Let us try, then, the Chanson de Roland 
at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down 
under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and 
the enemy — 

*' De plusurs choses a remembrer 11 prist, 
De tantes teres cume li bars cunquist, 
De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, 
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki I'nurrit."! 

That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable 
poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and 
such praise is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer — 

^fi? <pdTO- Toh<s d ij87j xari^sv <poai^oo<s aia 
I Aaxedaiiiovi au^c, (piXr) iv Tcarpidt XatTj ^ 

We are here in another world, another order of poetry 
altogether ; here is rightly due such supreme praise as 
that which M. Vitet gives to the Cha?ison de Rola7id. If 

1 " Then began he to call many things to remembrance, — all 
the lands which his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and 
the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who 
nourished him." — Chanson de Roland, iii. 939-942. 
2 " So said she ; they long since in Earth's soft arms were re- 
posing. 
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lace- 
daemon." 
Biad, iii. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtry). 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 287 

our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are 
to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise 
upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior. 

Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering 
what poetry belongs to the class of the._.truly excellent, 
and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in 
one's mind lines aad expressions of the great masters, and 
to apply them as a touchstDne to other poetry. Of course 
we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them ; 
it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we 
shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our 
minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence 
or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of 
this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside 
them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our 
turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have 
just quoted from Homer, the poet's comment on Helen's 
mention of her brothers ; — or take his 

"^A deiXu), Tc <7<pu>'i dofxe^j UrjXr/i avaxTt 
OvrjToT] 6/j.eI^ 5' iffTov dy-qp'o r d.davdru) re. 
71 ha 8u(TTrj)^()C(Ti [ist dvdpdatv aXys syrjnr^ ; * 

the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus ; — or take 
finally his 

Kal ffi, yipo'^, to Tzpiv fxkv dxouo/isv oX/Siov elvar 

the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. 
Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugo- 
lino's tremendous words — 

*' lo no piangeva ; si dentro Impietrai. 
Piangevan elli . . ."^ 

1" Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a 
mortal ? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that 
with men born to misery ye might have sorrow ? " — Iliad, xvii. 
443-445. 

2 " Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we 
hear, happy." — Iliad, xxiv. 543. 

3 " I wailed not, so of stone grew I within ; — they wailed." — 
Inferno, xxxiii. 39, 40. 



288 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM, 

take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil — 

" lo son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, 
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, 
Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale . . ."* 

take the simple, bat perfect, single line — 

*' In la sua volontade e nostra pace." ^ 

Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's 
expostulation with sleep — 

" Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
Seal up the ship-boy's eye s, and rock his brains 
In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..." 

and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio — 

" If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
To tell my story ..." 

Take of Milton that Miltonic passage — 

*' Darken'd so, yet shone 
Above them all the archangel ; but his face 
Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care 
Sat on his faded cheek . . " 

add two such lines as — 

*' And courage never to submit or yield 
And what is else not to be overcome ..." 

and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proser- 
pine, the loss 

"... which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world." 



1 " Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, 
that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this 
fire strike me.'''— Inferno, ii. 91-93. 

2 " In His will is our peace."— Pm'adiso, iii. 85. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 289 

These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are 
enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our 
judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious esti- 
mates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate. 

The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one 
another, but they have in common this :. the possession of 
the very highest poetical quality. If we are thoroughly 
penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have 
acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be 
laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical 
quality is present or wanting there. Critics give them- 
selves great labor to draw out what in the abstract, con- 
stitutes the characters of a high.jp.alitija.fpQ^^ It is 
much better simply to have recourse to concrete examples ; 
—to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very high- 
est quality, and to say : The characters of a high quality 
of poetry are what is expressed there. They are far better 
recognized by^ being felt in the verse of the master, than 
by being perused in the prose of the critic. Nevertheless 
if we are urgently pressed to give some critical account of 
them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying_down, 
not indeed how and why the characters arise, but where 
and in what they. arise. They are in the matter and sub- 
stance of the poetry, and they are in its manner and style. 
Both of these, the substance and matter on the one hand, 
the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an ac- 
cent, of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are 
asked to define this mark and accent in the abstract, our 
answer must be : No, for we should thereby be darken- 
ing the question, not clearing it. The mark and accent 
are as given by the substance and matter of that poetry, 
by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all other 
poetry which is akin to it in quality. 

Only one thing we may add as to the substance and 
matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle's profound 
observation that the superiority of poetry over history 
consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seri- 
ousness {^(pdoffO(p(I)r£pov xai anoodatorspov). Let US add, 

therefore, to what we have said, this : that the sub- 



290 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

stance and matter of the best poetry a cquire their 
special charact^X-Jrom possessing, in an eminent degree, 
trrrttr^"and serigusiiess. We may add yet further, what 
is in itself evident, that to the style and manner of the 
best poetry their special character, their accent, is given 
by their diction, and, even yet moi'e, by their movement.. 
And though we distinguish between the two characters, 
the two accents, of ..su^nority, yet they are nevertheless 
vitally connected one with. _the other. The superior 
character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and sub- 
stance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superior- 
ity of diction and movement marking its style and manner. 
The two superiorities are closely related, and are instead- 
fast proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic 
truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter and 
substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic 
stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style 
and manner. In proportion as this high stamp of diction 
and movement, again, is absent from a poet's style and 
manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and 
seriousness are absent from his substance and matter. 

So stated, these are but dry general ties ; their whole 
force lies in their application. And I could wish every 
student of poetry to make the application of them for him- 
self. Made by himself, the application would impress itself 
upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. Neither 
will my limits allow me to make any full application of 
the generalities above propounded ; but in the hope of 
bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and 
of establishing an important principle more firmly by their 
means, I will, in the space which remains to me, follow 
rapidly from the commencement the course of our English 
poetry with them in my view. 

Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with 
which our own poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly con- 
nected. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that 
seed-time of all modern language and literature, the poetry 
of France had a clear predominance in Europe. Of the 
two divisions of that poetry, its productions in the langue 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 291 

cVoil aud its productions in the laiigue cVoc, the poeti^ of 
the laiigue d'oc, of southern France, of the troubadours, is 
of importance because of its effect on Italian literature ; — 
the first literature of modern Europe to strike the true 
and grand note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and 
Petrarch it brought forth, classics. But the predominance 
of French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thir- 
teenth centuries, is due to its poetr}^ of the langue d'oil, the 
poetry of northern France and of the tongue which is now 
the French language. In the twelfth century the bloom 
of this romance-poetry was earlier and stronger in Eng- 
land, at the court of our Anglo-Xorman kings, than in 
France itself. But it was a bloom of French poetry ; and 
as our native poetry formed itself, it formed itself out of 
this. The romance-poems wliich took possession of the 
heart and imagination of Europe in the twelftli and thir- 
teenth centuries are French ; '- they are," as Sou they justly 
says, '^ the pride of French literature, nor have we any- 
thing which can be placed in competition with them." 
Themes were supplied from all quarters ; but the romance- 
setting which was common to them all, and which gained 
the ear of Europe, was French. This constituted for the 
French poetry, literature, and laiiguage, at the height of 
the Middle Age, an unchallenged predominance. The 
Italian Brnnetto Latini, the master of Dante, wrote his 
Treasure in French because, he says, " la j^arleure en est 
plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens." In the 
same century, the thirteenth, the French romance-writer, 
Christian of Troyes, formulates the claims, in chivalry 
and letters, of France, his native country, as follows : — *' 

" Or vous ert par ce hvre apris, 
Que Gresse ot de chevalerie 
Le premier los et de clergie ; 
Puis vint chevalerie a Rome, 
Et de la clergie la some, 
Qui ore est en France venue. 
Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenu 
Et que li lius li abelisse 
*Tant que de France n'isse 
^ L'onor qui s'i est arestee ! " 



292 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

'^ Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had 
the renown for chivalry and letters : then chivalry and 
the primacy in letters passed to Eome, and now it is come 
to France. God grant it may be kept there ; and that the 
place may please it so well, that the honor which has 
come to make stay in France may never depart thence ! " 

Yet it is now all gone, this French romance-poetry, of 
which the weight of substance and the power of style are 
not unfairly represented by this extract from Christian of 
Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate can we 
persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of poetical 
importance. 

But in the fourteenth century there comes an English- 
man nourished on this poetry ; taught his trade by this 
poetry, getting words, rhyme, meter from this poetry ; for 
even of that stanza which the Italians used, and which 
Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis 
and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer 
(I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, 
but so too did Christian of Troyes the Wolfram of Eschen- 
bach. Chaucer's power of fascination, however, is endur- 
ing ; his poetical importance does not need the assistance 
of the historic estimate ; it is real. He is a genuine 
source of joy and strength, which is flowing still for us 
and will flow always. , He will be read, as time goes on, 
far more generally than he is read now. His language is 
a cause of difficulty for us ; but so also, and I think in 
quite as great a degree, is the language of Burns. In 
Chaucer's case, as in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be 
unhesitatingly accepted and overcome. 

If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense 
superiority of, X^haucer^ poetry over the romance-poetry — 
why it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we suddenly 
feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that liis 
superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in 
the styTeoThis poetry. His superiority in substance is 
given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of 
human life, — so unlike the total want, in the romance- 
poets, of all intelligent command of it. Chaucer has not 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 293 

their helplessness ; he has ^i ned t he power to survevjlie 
world from a central, a truly human point of view. We 
have only to call to mind the Prologue to The Canterhury 
Tales. The right comment upon it is Dry den's : '' It is 
sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is 
God's 2^lenty." And again : '^ He is a perpetual fountain 
of good sense." It is by a large, free, sound representa- 
tion of things, that^poetry, this high criticism of life, has 
truth pi _s]ULbsteJice; and Chaucer's poetry has truth of 
substance. 

Of his style and manner, if we think first of the 
romance-poetry and then of Chaucer's divine liquidness 
of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult 
to speak temperately. They are irresistible, and justify 
all the rapture with which his successors speak of his 
*' gold dew-drops of speech. '' Johnson misses the point 
entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to 
Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, and says 
that Gower also can show smooth numbers and easy 
rhymes. The refinement of our numbers means some- 
thing far more than this. A nation may have versifiers 
with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may have 
no real poetry at all. Chaucer is the father of our splen- 
did English poetry ; he is our " well of English unde- 
filed," because _by the lovely charm of his diction, the 
lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and 
foujids^a. tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,]* 
Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, ^ 
the fluid movement, of Chaucer ; at one time it is his 
liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, 
and at another time it is his fluid movement. And the 
virtue is irresistible. 

Bounded as in space, I must yet find room for an ex- 
ample of Chaucer's virtue, as I have given examples to 
show the virtue of the great classics. I feel disposed to 
say that a single line is enough to show the charm of 
Chaucer's verse ; that merely one line like this — 
" O martyr souded i in virginitee ! " 

1 The French sovde ; soldered, fixed fast. 



294 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall 
not find in all the verse of romance-poetry ; — but this is 
saying nothing. The virtue is such as we shall not find, 
perhaps, in all English poetry, outside the poets whom I 
have named as the special inheritors of Chaucer's tradi- 
tion. A single line, however, is too little if we have not 
the strain of Chaucer's verse well in our memory ; let us 
take a stanza. It is from The Prioresses Tale, the story 
of the Christian child murdered in a Jewry — 

" My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone 
Saide this child, and as by way of kinde 
I should have dyed, yea, longe time agone 
But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, 
Will that his glory last and be in minde, 
And for the worship of his mother dere 
Yet may I sing O Alma loud and clere." 

Wordsworth has modernized this Tale, and to feel how 
delicate and evanescent is the charm of verse, we have 
only to read Wordsworth's first three lines of this stanza 
after Chaucer's — 

" My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow, 
Said this J^oung child, and by the la-w of kind 
I should have died, yea, many hours ago." 

The charm is departed. It is often said that the power 
of liquidness and fluidity in Chaucer's verse was depend- 
ent upon a free, a licentious dealing with language, such 
as is now impossible ; upon a liberty, such as Burns too 
enjoyed, of making words like neck, hird, into a dissyllable 
by adding to them, and words like cause, rhyme, into a 
dissyllable by sounding the e mute. It is true that 
Chaucer's fluidity is conjoined with this liberty, and is 
admirably served by it ; but we ought not to say that it 
was dependent upon it. It was dependent upon his 
talent. Other poets with a like liberty do not attain to the 
fluidity of Chaucer ; Burns himself does not attain to it. 
Poets, again, who have a talent akin to Chaucer's, such as 
Shakespeare or Keats, have known how to attain to his 
fluidity without the like liberty. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. o«. . 

Ami yet Chaucer is not one of the great chissics. Hi ; 
poetry transcends and effaces, easily and without et!or~. 
all the romance-poetry of Catholic Christendom ; it tran- 
cends and effaces all the English poetry contemporarv- 
with it, it transcends and effaces all the English poetr. 
subsequent to it down to the age of Elizabeth. Of su. - 
avail is poetic truth of substance, in its natural ai: t 
necessary union with poetic truth of style. And yet, 1 
say, Chaucer is not one of the great classics. He has d< : 
their accent. What is wanting to him is suggested by the 
mere mention of the name of the first great classic '-' 
Christendom, the immortal poet who died eighty yeaiN 
before Chaucer, — Dante. The accent of such verse as 

** In la sua voluntade e nostra pace ..." 
is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach ; we praise him, buc 
we feel that this accent is out of the question for him. 
It may be said that it was necessarily out of the reach oi 
any poet in the England of that stage of growth. Pos- 
sibly ; but we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate 
of poetry. However we may account for its absenco. 
som.elliing is wanting, then, to the poetry of Chaucer, 
which poetry must have "before itr~Cah Idq placed in th'j 
glorious class of the best. And there is no doubt what 
that something is. It _is_the orToudaiorr,?, the high and 
excellent seriousness, which Aristotle assigns as one of the 
grand virtues of poetry. The substance of Chaucer's 
poetry, his view of things and his criticism of life, has 
largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity ; but it has not 
this high seriousness. Homer's criticism of life has it. 
Dante's has it, Shakespeare's has it. It is this chiefly which 
gives to pux spirits what they can rest upon ; and with the 
increasing demands of our modern ages upon poetry, this 
virtue of giving us what we can rest upon will be more and 
more highly esteemed. A voice from the slums of Paris, 
fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the voice of poor Villon 
out of his life of riot and crime, has at its happy moments 
(as, for instance, in the last stanza of La Belle Heaulmiere') 
1 The name Heaulmiire is said to be derived from a headdress 
(helm) worn as a mark by com-tesans. In Villon's ballad, a poor 



296 ESSAYS AND CRITICISM. 

more of tills important poetic virtue of seriousness than 
all the productions of Chaucer. But its apparition in 
Villon, and in men like Villon, is fitful ; the greatness of 
the great poets, the power of their criticism of life, is that 
their virtue is sustained. 

To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there 
must be this limitation ; he lacks the high seriousness of 
the great classics, and therewith an important pare of 
their virtue. Still, the main fact for us to bear in mind 
about Chaucer is his sterling value according to that real 
estimate which we firmly adopt for all poets. lie Jias 
poetic truth oi._^ubstancej thQiigkJije_luis not high poetic 
seriousness^ and corresponding to his truth of substance 
he ha3-ah"exc£iiisite value of style and manner. With him 
is born our real poetry. 

For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Eliz- 
abethan poetry, or on the continuation and close of this 
poetry in Milion. We all of us profess to be agreed in 
the estimate of this poetry ; we all of us recognize it as 
great poetry, our greatest, and Shakespeare and Milton 
as our poetical classics. The real estimate, here, has 
universal currency. With the next age of our poetry 
divergency and difficulty began. x\n historic estimate of 
that poetry has established itself ; and the question is, 
whether it will be found to coincide with the real estijiiate. 

old creature of this class laments her days of youth and beauty. 
The last stanza of the ballad runs thus — 

** Ainsi le bon temps regretons 
Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sott 
Assises bas, a croppetons, 
Tout en ung tas comme pelottes ; 
A petit feu de chenevottes 
Tost allumees, tost estainctes, 
• Et jadis fusmes si mignottes I 

Ainsi en prend a maintz et maintes." 

" Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly 
old things, low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many 
balls ; by a little fire of hemp-f«talks, soon lighted, soon spent. 
And once we were such darlings I So fares it with many and 
many a one." 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 297 

The age of Dryden, together with onr whole eighteenth 
century which followed it, sincerely believed itself to have 
produced poetical classics of its own, and even to have 
made advance, in poetry, beyond all its predecessors. 
Dryden regards as not seriously disputable the opinion 
"that the sweetness of English verse Avas never understood 
or practised by our fathers.^' Cowley could see nothing 
at all in Chaucer's poetry. Dryden heartily admired it, 
and, as we have seen, praised its matter admirably ; but 
of its exquisite manner and movement all he can find to 
say is that '^ there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune 
in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect." 
Addison, wishing to praise Chaucer's numbers, compares 
them with Dryden's own. And all through the eighteenth 
century, and down even into our own times, the stereotyped 
phrase of approbation for good verse found in our early 
poetry has been, that it even approached the verse of 
Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Jolmson. 

Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics ? Is the historic 
estimate, which represents them as such, and which has 
been so long established that it cannot easily give way, 
the real estimate ? Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is well 
known, denied it ; but the authority of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge does not weigh much with the young generation, 
and there are many signs to show that the eighteenth cen- 
tury and its judgments are coming into favor again. Are 
the favorite poets of the eighteenth century classics ? 

It is impossible within my present limits to discuss the 
question fully. And what man of letters would not shrink 
from seeming to dispose dictatorially of the claims of two 
men who are, at any rate, such masters in letters as Dryden 
and Pope ; two men of such admirable talent, both of 
them, and one of them, Dryden, a man, on all sides, of 
such energetic and genial power ? And yet, if we are to 
gain the full benefit from poetry, we must have the real 
estimate of it. I cast about for some mode of arriving, 
in the present case, at such an estimate without offence. 
And perhaps the best way is to begin, as it is easy to be- 
gin, with cordial praise. 



298 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of 
Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus : ^^ Though 
truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from 
Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I 
hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, 
the date being out of her darkness in this morning of our 
poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun," — we 
pronounce that such a prose is intolerable. When we find 
Milton writing : ^' And long it was not after, when I was 
confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frus- 
trate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, 
ought himself to be a true poem,'' — we pronounce that 
such a prose has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete 
and inconvenient. But when we find Dry den telling us : 
" What Virgil wrote in the vigor of his age, in plenty and 
at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining 
years ; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, 
curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I 
write," — then we exclaim that here at last we have the 
true English prose, a prose such as we would all gladly 
use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton's con- 
temporary. 

But after the Restoration the time had come when our 
nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the 
time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious 
need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation 
which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was 
impossible that this freedom should be brought about with- 
out some negative excess, without some neglect and im- 
pairment of the religious life of the soul ; and the spiritual 
history of the eighteenth century shows us that the free- 
dom was not achieved without them. Still, the freedom 
was achieved ; the preoccupation, a,n undoubtedly baneful 
and retarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. 
And as with religion amongst us at that period, so it was 
also with letters. A fit prose was a necessity ; but it was 
impossible that a fit prose should establish itself amongst 
us without some touch of frost to the imaginative life of 
the soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose are regu- 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 299 

larity, uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, 
whose destiny it may be to bring their nation to the at- 
tainment of a fit prose, must of necessity, whether they 
work in prose or in verse, give a predominating, an almost 
exclusive attention to the qualities of regularity, uni- 
formity, precision, balance. But an almost exclusive at- 
tention to these qualities involves some repression and 
silencing of poetry. 

We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious 
founder. Pope as the splendid high priest, of our age of 
prose and reason, of our excellent and indispensable 
eighteenth century. For the purposes of their mission 
and destiny their poetry, like their prose, is admirable. 
Do you ask me whether Dryden's verse, take it almost 
where you will, is not good ? 

" A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged." 

I answer : Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator 
of an age of prose and reason. Do you ask me whether 
Pope's verse, take it almost where you will, is not good ? 

" To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down ; 
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own." 

I answer : Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of 
an age of prose and reason. But do you ask me whether 
such verse proceeds from men with an adequate poetic 
criticism of life, from men whose criticism of life has a 
high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, 
has poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity ? Do 
you ask me whether the application of ideas to life in the 
verse of these men, often a powerful application, no doubt, 
is a ipowertul poetic application ? Do you ask me whether 
the poetry of these men has either the matter or the in- 
separable manner of such an adequate poetic criticism ; 
whether it has the accent of 

'* Absent thee from felicity awhile. . ." 



or of 
or of 



And what is else not to be overcome. . ." 
" O martyr souded in virginitee ! " 



300 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

I answer : It has not and cannot have them ; it is the 
poetry of the builders of an age of prose and reason. 
Though they may write in verse, though they may in a cer- 
tain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden 
and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics 
of our prose. 

Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age ; 
the position of Gray is singular, and demands a word of 
notice here. He has not the volume or the power of poets 
who, coming in times more favorable, have attained to 
an independent criticism of life. But he lived with the 
great poets, he lived, above all, with the Greeks, through 
perpetually studying and enjoying them ; and he caught 
their poetic point of view for regarding life, caught their 
poetic manner. The point of view and the manner are not 
self-sprung in him, he caught them of others ; and he had 
not the free and abundant use of them. But whereas 
Addison and Pope never had the use of them. Gray had 
the use of them at times. He is the scantiest and frailest 
of classics in our poetry, but he is a classic. 

And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards 
the end of the eighteenth century, we are met by the great 
name of Burns. We enter now on times where the per- 
sonal estimate of poets begins to be rife, and where the 
real estimate of them is not reached witliout difficulty. 
But in spite of the disturbing pressures of personal par- 
tiality, of national partiality, let us try to reach a real 
estimate of the poetry of Burns. 

By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the 
eigliteenth century, and has little importance for us. 

" Mark rufiian Violence, distain'd with crimes, 
Rousing elate in these degenerate times ; 
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, 
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way ; 
While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue 
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong I ' ' 

Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame 
would have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda's love- 
poet, Sylvander, the real Burns either. But he tells us 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 301 

himself : '^ These English songs gravel me to death. I 
have not the command of the language that I have of my 
native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more 
barren in English than in Scotch. I have been at Dun- 
can Gray to dress it in English, but all I can do is des- 
perately stupid." We English turn naturally, in Burns, 
to the poems in our own language, because we can read 
them easily ; but in those poems we have not the real 
Burns. 

The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let 
us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing 
perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch 
manners, a Scotchman's estimate is apt to be personal. 
A Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch 
religion, and Scotch manners ; he has a tenderness for it ; 
he meets its poet half way. In this tender mood he reads 
pieces like the Holy Fair or HaUoiveen. But this world 
of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners is 
against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial coun- 
tryman who reads him ; for in itself it is not a beautiful 
world, and no one can deny that it is of advantage to a 
poet to deal with a beautiful world. Burns's world of 
Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, is 
often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world ; even the world 
of his Cotter's Saturday Night is not a beautiful world. 
JS'o doubt a poet's criticism of life may have such truth 
and power that it triumphs over its world and delights us. 
Burns may triumph over his world, often he does triumph 
over his world, but let us observe how and where. Burns 
is the first case we have had where the bias of the personal 
estimate tends to mislead ; let us look at him closely, he 
can bear it. 

Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, 
convivial, genuine, delightful, here — 

' Leeze me on drink ! it gies us mair 
Than either school or college ; 
It kindles wit, it waukens lair, 
It pangs us fou o' knowledge. 



302 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Be 't whisky gill or penny wheep 

Or ony stronger potion, 
It never fails, on drinking deep, 

To kittle up our notion 

By night or day." 

There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and 
it is unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, 
but because it has not that accent of sincerity which bac- 
chanalian poetry, to do it justice, very often has. There 
is something in it of bravado, something which makes us 
feel that we have not the man speaking to us with his 
real voice ; something, therefore, poetically unsound. 

With still more confidence will his admirers tell us 
that we have the genuine Burns, the great poet, when his 
strain asserts the independence, equality, dignity, of men, 
as in the famous song For a' that and a^ that — 

" A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 
Guid faith he mauna fa' that 1 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Their dignities, and a' that. 
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 
Are higher rank than a' that." 

Here they find his grand, genuine touches ; and still 
more, when this puissant genius, who so often set morality 
at defiance, falls moralizing — 

" The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love 

Luxuriantly indulge it ; 
But never tempt th' illicit rove, 

Tho' naething should divulge it. 
I waive the quantum o' the sin, 

The hazard o' concealing, 
But och ! it hardens a' within, 

And petrifies the feeling." 

Or in a higher strain — 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
Decidedly can try us , 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 303 

He knows each chord, its various tone ; 

Each spring its various bias. 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say, 
unsurpassable — 

*' To make a happy fire-side clime 
To weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 

There is criticism of life for yon, the admirers of Burns 
will say to us ; there is the application of ideas to life ! 
There is, undoubtedly. The doctrine of the last-quoted 
lines coincides almost exactly with what was the aim and 
end, Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of Socrates. 
And the application is a powerful one ; made by a man 
of vigorous understanding, and (need I say ?) a master 
of language. 

But for the supreme poetical success more is required 
than the powerful application of ideas to life ; it must 
be an application under the conditions fixed by the laws 
of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Those laws fix as an 
essential condition^ in the poet's treatment of such matters 
as are here in question, hj^h seriousness ; — the high 
seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity. The 
accent of higli, seriousness, born of absolute sincerity, is 
what gives to such verse as 

" In la sua volontade e nostra pace . . " 

to such criticism of life as Dante's, its power. Is this 
accent felt in the passages which I have beeai quoting from 
Burns ? Surely not ; surely, if our sense is quick, we 
must perceive that we have not in those passages a vojce 
from the very inmost soul of the genuine Burns ; he is not 
speaking to us from these depths, he is more or less 
preaching. And the compensation for admiring such 



304 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

passages less, from missing the perfect poetic accent in 
them, will be that we shall admire more the poetry where 
that accent is found. 

No ; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high 
seriousness of the great classics, and the virtue of matter 
and manner which goes with that high seriousness is 
wanting to his work. At moments he toi^ched it in a 
profound and passionate melancholy, as in those four 
immortal lines taken by Byron as a motto for The BiHde 
of Ahydos, but which have in them a depth of poetic 
quality such as resides in no verse of Byron's own — 

" Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met, or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 

But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make ; the 
rest, in the Fareiuell to Nancy, is verbiage. 

We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, 
by conceiving his work as having truth of matter and 
truth of manner, but not the accent or the poetic 
virtue of the highest masters. His genuine criticism of 
life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, is ironic ; it is 
not — 

" Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme 

These woes of mine fulfil. 
Here firm I rest, they must be best 
Because they are Thy will ! " 

It is far rather : Whistle oiure the lave oH ! Yet we may 
say of him as of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as 
they come before him, his view is large, free, shrewd, 
benignant, — truly poetic, therefore ; and his manner of 
rendering what he sees is to match. But we must note, 
at the same time, his great difference from Chaucer. The 
freedom of Chaucer is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, 
reckless energy ; the benignity of Chaucer deepens, in 
Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of things ; 
— of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non- 
human nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 305 

manner, the manner of Burns has spring, bounding 
swiftness. Burns is by far the greater force, though he 
has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer, 
richer, more significant than that of Burns ; but when the 
largeness and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in 
Tarn o' Shanter, or still more in that puissant and 
splendid production, Tfie Jolly Beggars, his world may be 
what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the 
world of The Jolly Beggars there is more than hideousness 
and squalor, there is bestiality ; yet the piece is a superb 
poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which 
make the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's 
Faust, seem artificial and tame beside it ,and which are 
only matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes. 

Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so 
admirably, and also in those poems and songs where to 
shrewdness he adds infinite archness and wit, and to 
benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is flawless, and 
a perfect poetic whole is the resnlt, — in things like the ad- 
dress to the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things like 
Duncan Gray, Tarn Glen, Wliistle and Til come to you my 
Lad, Auld Lang Syne (this list might be made much 
longer), — here we have the genuine Burns, of whom the 
real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor 
with the excellent o-oudac(kr]<^ of the great classics, nor 
with a verse rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like 
theirs ; but a poet with thorough truth of substance and 
an answering truth of style, giving us a poetry sound to 
the core. AYe all of us have a leaning towards the 
pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns 
most for his touches of piercing, sometimes almost in- 
tolerable, pathos ; for verse like — 

" We twa hae paidl't i' the burn 
From mornin' sun till dine ; 
But seas between us braid hae roar'd 
Sin auld lang syne ..." 

where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by 
the perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer 
masterpieces that he is poetically most wholesome for us. 
20 



806 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

For the votary misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, 
as so many of us have been, are, and will be, — of that 
beautiful spirit building his many-colored haze of words 
and images. 

" Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" — 

no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with 
Burns at his archest and soundest. Side by side with 
the 

" On the brink of the night and the morning 
My coursers are wont to respire, 
But the Earth has just whispered a warning 
That their flight must be swifter than fire ..." 

of Prometheus Unboiind, how salutary, how very salutary, 
to place this from Tam Glen — 

* My minnie does constantly deave me 
And bids me beware o' young men ; 
They flatter, she says, to deceive me ; 
But wha can think sae o' Tam Glen ? " 

But we enter on burning ground as we approach the 
poetry of times so near to us — poetry like that of Byron, 
Shelley, and Wordsworth — of which tlie estimates are so 
often not only personal, but personal with passion. For 
my purpose, it is enough to have taken the single case of 
Burns, the first poet we come to of whose work the es- 
timate formed is evidently apt to be personal, and to have 
suggested how we may proceed, using the poetry of the 
great classics as a sort of touchstone, to correct this es- 
timate, as we had previously corrected by the same means 
the historic estimate where we met with it. A collection 
like the present, with its succession of celebrated names 
and celebrated poems, offers a good opportunity to us for 
resolutely endeavoring to make our estimates of poetry 
real. I have sought to point out a method which will 
help us in making them so, and to exhibit it in use so far 
as to put any one who likes in a way of applying it for 
himself. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY. 307 

At any rate the end to which the method and the es- 
timate are designed to lead, and from leading to which, if 
they do lead to it, they get their whole value, — the bene- 
fit of being able clearly to feel and deeply to enjoy the 
best, the truly classic, in poetry,— is an end, let me say it 
once more at parting, of supreme importance. We are 
often told that an era is opening in which we are to see 
multitudes of a common sort of readers, and masses of a 
common sort of literature ; that such readers do not want 
and could not relish anything better than such literature, 
and that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable 
industry. Even if good literature entirely lost currency 
with the world, it would still be abundantly worth while 
to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose 
currency with the world, in spite of momentary appear- 
ances ; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and 
supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world's de- 
liberate and conscious choice, but by something far deeper, 
— by the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. 



XII. 
MILTON/ 

The most eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly 
before leaving the world, a warning cry against ** the 
Anglo-Saxon contagion." The tendencies and aims, tlie 
view of life and the social economy of the ever-multi- 
plying and spreading Anglo-Saxon race, would be found 
congenial, this prophet feared, by all the prose, all the 
vulgarity amongst mankind, and would invade and over- 
power all nations. The true ideal would be lost, a general 
sterility of mind and heart would set in. 

The prophet had in view, no doubt, in the warning thus 
given, us and our colonies, but the United States still 
more. There the Anglo-Saxon race is already most 
numerous, there it increases fastest ; there material in- 
terests are most absorbing and pursued with most energy ; 
there the ideal, the saving ideal, of a high and rare ex- 
cellence, seems perhaps to suffer most danger of being ob- 
scured and lost. Whatever one may think of the general 
danger to the world from the Anglo-Saxon contagion, it 
appears to me difficult to deny that the growing greatness 
and influence of the United States does bring with it some 
danger to the ideal of a high and rare excellence. The 
average man is too much a religion there ; his performance 
is unduly magnified, his shortcomings are not duly seen 
and admitted. A lady in the State of Ohio sent to me 
only the other day a volume on American authors ; the 
praise given throughout was of snch high pitch that in 

1 An address delivered in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, 
on the 13th of February, 1888, at the unveiling of a Memorial 
Window presented by Mr. George W, Childs of Philadelphia, 



MILTON. 309 

thanking her I could not forbear saying that for only one 
or two of the authors named was such a strain of praise 
admissible, and that we lost all real standard of excellence 
by praising so uniformly and immoderately. She answered 
me with charming good temper, that very likely I was 
quite right, but it was pleasant to her to think that excel- 
lence was common and abundant. But excellence is not 
' common and abundant ; on the contrary, as the Greek 
poet long ago said, excellence dwells among rocks hardly 
accessible, and a man must almost wear his heart out be- 
fore he can reach her. Whoever talks of excellence as 
common and abundant, is on the way to lose all right 
standard of excellence. And when the right standard of 
excellence is lost, it is not likely that much which is ex- 
cellent will be produced. 

To habituate ourselves, therefore, to approve, as the 
Biblfe says^ things that are really excellent, is of the high- 
est importance. And some apprehension may justly be 
caused by a tendency in Americans to take, or, at any 
rate, attempt to take, profess to take, the average man 
and his performances too seriously, to over-rate and over- 
praise what is not really superior. 

But we have met here to-day to witness the unveiling of 
a gift in Milton's honor, and a gift bestowed by an Ameri- 
can, Mr. Childs of Philadelphia ; whose cordial hospitality 
so many Englishmen, I myself among the number, have 
experienced in America. It was only last autumn that 
Stratford-upon-Avon celebrated the reception of a gift 
from the same generous donor in honor of Shakespeare. 
Shakespeare and Milton — he who wishes to keep his 
standard of excellence high, cannot choose two better ob- 
jects of regard and honor. And it is an American who 
has chosen them, and whose beautiful gift in honor of one 
of them, Milton, with Mr. Whittier's simple and true lines 
inscribed upon it, is unveiled to-day. Perhaps this gift 
in honor of Milton, of which I am asked to speak, is, even 
more than the gift in honor of Shakespeare, one to sug- 
gest edifying reflections to us. 

Like Mr. Whittier, I treat the gift of Mr. Childs as a 



310 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

gift in honor of Milton, although the window given is in 
memory of his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, the 
*' late espoused saint " of the famous sonnet, who died in 
child-bed at the end of the first year of her marriage with 
Milton, and who lies buried here with her infant. Milton 
is buried in Cripplegate, but he lived for a good while in 
this parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and here he 
composed part of Paradise Lost, and the whole of Para- 
dise Regai7ied and Samson Agoiiistes. When death de- 
prived him of the Catherine whom the new window com- 
memorates, Milton had still some eighteen years to live, 
and Cromwell, his '* chief of men,'* was yet ruling Eng- 
land. But the Restoration, with its '' Sons of Belial," 
was not far off ; and in the meantime Milton's heavy 
affliction had laid fast hold upon him, his eyesight had 
failed totally, he was blind. In what remained to him of 
life he had the consolation of producing the Paradise Lost 
and the Samso7i Agonistes, and such a consolation we may 
indeed count as no slight one. But the daily life of hap- 
piness in common things and in domestic affections — a 
life of which, to Milton as to Dante, too small a share 
was given — he seems to have known most, if not only, in 
his one married year with the wife who is here buried. 
Her form '* vested all in white," as in his sonnet he re- 
lates that after her death she appeared to him, her face 
veiled, but with ^' love, sweetness, and goodness " shining 
in her person, — this fair and gentle daughter of the rigid 
sectarist of Hackney, this lovable companion with whom 
Milton had rest and happiness one year, is a part of Mil- 
ton indeed, and in calling up her memory, we call up 
his. 

And in calling up Milton's memory we call up, let me 
say, a memory upon which, in prospect of the Anglo- 
Saxon contagion and of its dangers supposed and real, it 
may be well to lay stress even more than upon Shake- 
speare's. If to our English race an inadequate sense for 
perfection of work is a real danger, if the discipline of 
respect for a high and flawless excellence is peculiarly 
needed by us, Milton is of all our gifted men the best 



MILTON. 311 

lesson, the most salutary influence. In the sure and flaw- 
less perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admi- 
rable as Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique 
amongst us. IM'o one else in English literature and art 
possesses the like distinction. 

Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth, all of them good poets 
who have studied Milton, followed Milton, adopted his 
form, fail in their diction and rhythm if we try them 
by that high standard of excellence maintained by 
Milton constantly. From style really high and pure 
Milton never departs ; their departures from it are 
frequent. 

Shakespeare is divinely strong, rich, and attractive. 
But sureness of perfect style Shakespeare himself does 
not possess. I have heard a politician express wonder at 
the treasures of political wisdom in a certain celebrated 
scene of Troilus and Cressida ; for my part I am at least 
equally moved to wonder at the fantastic and false diction 
in which Shakespeare has in that scene clothed them. 
Milton, from one end of Paradise Lost to the other, is 
in his diction and rhythm constantly a great artist in the 
great style. Whatever may be said as to the .subject of 
his poem, as to the conditions under which he received 
his subject and treated it, that praise, at any rate, is 
assured to him. 

For the rest, justice is not at present done, in my opin- 
ion, to Milton's management of the inevitable matter of a 
Puritan epic, a matter full of difliculties, for a poet. 
Justice is not done to the architectonics, as Goethe would 
have called them, of Paradise Lost ; in these, too, the 
power of Milton's art is remarkable. But this may be a 
proposition which requires discussion and development 
for establishing it, and they are impossible on an occa- 
sion like the present. 

That Milton, of all our English race, is by his diction 
and rhythm the one artist of the highest rank in the great 
style whom we have ; this I take as requiring no discus- 
sion, this I take as certain. 

The mighty power of poetry and art is generally ad- 



312 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

mitted. But where the soul of this power, of this power 
at its best, chiefly resides, very many of us fail to see. It 
resides chiefly in the refining and elevation wrought in us 
by the high and rare excellence of the great style. We 
may feel the effect without being able to give ourselves 
clear account of its cause, but the thing is so. Now, no 
race needs the influences mentioned, the influences of re- 
fining and elevation, more than ours ; and in poetry and 
art our grand source for them is Milton. 

To what does he owe this supreme distinction ? To 
nature first and foremost, to that bent of nature for in- 
equality which to the worshippers of the average man is 
so unacceptable ; to a gift, a divine favor. '^ The older 
one grows," says Goethe, '^ the more one prizes natural 
gifts, because by no possibility can they be procured and 
stuck on." Nature formed Milton to be a great poet. 
But what other poet has shown so sincere a sense of the 
grandeur of his vocation, and a moral effort so constant 
and sublime to make and keep himself worthy of it ? 
The Milton of religious and political controversy, and 
perhaps of domestic life also, is not seldom disfigured by 
want of amenity, by acerbity. The Milton of poetry, on 
the other hand, is one of those great men *^who are 
modest " — to quote a fine remark of Leopardi, that gifted 
and stricken young Italian, who in his sense for poetic 
style is worthy to be named with Dante and Milton — 
" who are modest, because they continually compare 
themselves, not with other men, but with that idea of the 
perfect which they have before their mind." The Milton 
of poetry is the man, in his own magnificent phrase, of 
'' devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich 
with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Sera- 
phim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and 
purify the lips of whom he pleases." And finally, the 
Milton of poetry is, in his own words again, the man of 
^industrious and select reading." Continually he lived 
in companionship with higli and rare excellence, with the 
great Hebrew poets and prophets, with the great poets of 
Greece and Kome. The Hebrew compositions were not in 



MILTON. 313 

verse, and can be not inadequately represented by the 
grand, measured prose of our English Bible. The verse 
of the poets of Greece and Rome no translation can 
adequately reproduce. Prose cannot have the power of 
verse ; verse-translation may give whatever of charm is 
in the soul and talent of the translator himself, but never 
the specific charm of the verse and poet translated. In 
our race are thousands of readers, presently there will be 
millions, who know not a word of Greek and Latin, and 
will never learn those languages. If this host of readers 
are ever to gain any sense of the power and charm of the 
great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not through 
translations of the ancients, but through the original 
poetry of Milton, who has the like power and charm, be- 
cause he has the like great style. 

Through Milton they may gain it, for, in conclusion, 
Milton is English ; this master in the great style of the 
ancients is English. Virgil, whod Milton loved and 
honored, has at the end of the Mneid a noble passage, 
where Juno, seeing the defeat of Turnus and the Italians 
imminent, the victory of the Trojan invaders assured, en- 
treats Jupiter that Italy may nevertheless survive and be 
herself still, may retain her own mind, manners, and 
language, and not adopt those of the conqueror. 

" Sit Latium, sint Albani per secula reges ! " 

Jupiter grants the prayer ; he promises perpetuity and the 
future to Italy — Italy reinforced by whatever virtue the 
Trojan race has, but Italy, not Troy. This we may take 
as a sort of parable suiting ourselves. All the Anglo-Sax- 
on contagion, all the flood of Anglo-Saxon commonness, 
beats vainly against the great st)de but cannot shake it, 
and has to accept its triumph. But it triumphs in Mil- 
ton, in one of our own race, tongue, faith, and morals. 
Milton has made the great style no longer an exotic here ; 
he has made it an inmate amongst us, a leaven, and a 
power. Nevertheless he, and his hearers on both sides of 
the Atlantic, are English, and will remain English — 



314 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

" Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt." 

The English race overspreads the world, and at the same 
time the ideal of an excellence the most high and the most 
rare abides a possession with it forever. 



XIII. 
THOMAS GRAY.i 

James Browi^, Master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge, 
Gray's friend and executor, in a letter written a fortnight 
after Gray's death to another of his friends. Dr. Wharton 
of Old Park, Durham, has the following passage : — 

" Everything is now dark and melancholy in Mr. Gray's 
room, not a trace of him remains there ; it looks as if it 
had been for some time uninhabited, and the room be- 
spoke for another inhabitant. The thoughts I have of him 
will last, and will be useful to me the few years I can ex- 
pect to live. He never spoke out, but I believe from 
some little expressions I now remember to have dropped 
from him, that for some time past he thought himself 
nearer his end than those about him apprehended." 

He never spoke out. In these four words is contained 
the whole history of Gray, both as a man and as a poet. 
The words fell naturally, and as it were by chance, from 
their writer's pen ; but let us dwell upon them, and press 
into their meaning, for in following it we shall come to 
understand Gray. 

He was in his fifty-fifth year when he died, and he lived 
in ease and leisure, yet a few pages hold all his poetry ; 
he never spohe out in poetry. Still, the reputation which 
he had achieved by his few pages is extremely high. True, 
Johnson speaks of him with coldness and disparagement. 
Gray disliked Johnson, and refused to make his acquaint- 
ance ; one might fancy that Johnson wrote with some irri- 
tation from this cause. But Johnson was not by nature 

1 Prefixed to the Selection from Gray in Ward's English Poets, 
vol. iv. 1880. 

315 



316 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

fitted to do justice to Gray and to his poetry ; this by it- 
self is a sufficient explanation of the deficiencies of his 
criticism of Gray. We may add a further explanation of 
them which is supplied by Mr. Cole's papers. "When 
Johnson was publishing his Life of Gray." says Mr. Cole, 
"I gave him several anecdotes, but he ivas very anxious as 
soon as possible to get to the end of his labors/' Johnson 
was not naturally in sympathy with Gray, whose life he 
had to write, and when he wrote it he was in a hurry be- 
sides. He did Gray injustice, but even Johnson^s author- 
ity failed to make injustice, in this case, prevail. Lord 
Macaulay calls the Life of Gray the worst of Johnson's 
Lives, and it had found many censurers before Macaulay. 
Gray's poetical reputation grew and flourished in spite of 
it. The poet Mason, his first biographer, in his epitaph 
equaled him with Pindar. Britain has known, says 
Mason, 

'* . . . a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, 
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray." 

The immense vogue of Pope and of his style of versifica- 
tion had at first prevented the frank recepjbion of Gray by 
the readers of poetry. The Blegy pleased ; it could not 
but please : but Gray's poetry, on the whole, astonished 
his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them ; it 
was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue. 
It made its way, however, after his death, with the public 
as well as with the few ; and Gray's second biographer, 
Mitford, remarks that " the works which were either 
neglected or ridiculed by their contemporaries have now 
raised Gray and Collins to the rank of our two greatest 
lyric poets.*' Their reputation was established, at any 
rate, and stood extremely high, even if they were not 
popularly read. Johnson's disparagement of Gray was 
called "petulant," and severely blamed. Beattie, at the 
end of the eighteenth century, writing to Sir William 
Forbes, says : " Of all the English poets of this age Mr. 
Gray is most admired, and I think with justice." Cowper 
writes: "I have been reading Gray's works, and think 



THOMAS GRAY. 317 

him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the char- 
acter of sublime. Perhaps you will remember that I once 
had a different opinion of him. I was prejudiced." Adam 
Smith says : " Gray joins to the sublimity of Milton the 
elegance and harmony of Pope; and nothing is wanting 
to render him, perhaps, the first poet in the English lan- 
guage, but to have written a little more." And, to come 
nearer to our own times. Sir James Mackintosh speaks of 
Gray thus : " Of all English poets he was the most finished 
artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of 
which poetical style seemed to be capable." 

In a poet of such magnitude, how shall we explain his 
scantiness of production ? Shall we explain it by saying 
that to make of Gray a poet of this magnitude is absurd ; 
that his genius and resources were small, and that his pro- 
duction, therefore, was small also, but that the jDopularity 
of a single piece, the Elegy, — a popularity due in great 
measure to the subject, — created for Gray a reputation to 
which he has really no right ? He himself was not de- 
ceived by the favor shown to the Elegy. '^ Gray told me 
with a good deal of acrimony," writes Dr. Gregory, '' that 
the Elegy owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and 
that the public would have received it as well if it had been 
written in prose." This is too much to say ; the Elegy is 
a beautiful poem, and in admiring it the public showed a 
true feeling for poetry. But it is true that the Elegy 
owed much of its success to its subject, and that it has re- 
ceived a too unmeasured and unbounded praise. 

Gray himself, however, maintained that the Elegy was 
not his best work in jooetry, and he was right. High as 
is the praise due to the Elegy, it is yet true that in other 
productions of Gray he exhibits poetical qualities even 
higher than those exhibited in the Elegy. He deserves, 
therefore, his extremely high reputation as a poet, although 
his critics and the public may not always have praised him 
with perfect judgment. We are brought back, then, to 
the question : How, in a poet so really considerable, are 
we to explain his scantiness of production ? 

Scanty Gray's production, indeed, is ; so scanty that to 



318 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

supplement our knowledge of it by a knowledge of the 
man is in this case of peculiar interest and service. Gray's 
letters and the records of him by his friends have happily 
made it possible for us thus to know him, and to appre- 
ciate his high qualities of mind and soul. Let us see these 
in the man first, and then observe how they appear in his 
poetry ; and Avhy they cannot enter into it more freeh- 
and inspire it with more strength, render it more abun- 
dant. 

We will begin with his acquirements. " Mr. Gray was/' 
writes his friend Temple, " perhaps the most learned man 
in Europe. He knew every branch of history both natural 
and civil ; had read all the original historians of England, 
France, and Italy ; and was a great antiquarian. Criti- 
cism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part 
of his study. Voyages and travels of all sorts were his 
favorite amusements ; and he had a fine taste in painting, 
prints, architecture, and gardening." The notes in his 
interleaved copy of Linnaeus remained to show the extent 
and accuracy of his knowledge in the natural sciences, 
particularly in botany, zoology, and entomology. Ento- 
mologists testified that his account of English insects was 
more perfect than any that had then appeared. His notes 
and papers, of which some have been published, othersv 
remain still in manuscript, give evidence, besides, of his 
knowledge of literature ancient and modern, geography 
and topography, painting, architecture and antiquities, 
and of his curious researches in heraldry. He was an ex- 
cellent musician. Sir James Mackintosh reminds us, 
moreover, that to all the other accomplishments and merits 
of Gray we are to add this : '' That he was the first dis- 
coverer of the beauties of nature in England, and has 
marked out the course of every picturesque journey that 
can be made in it." 

Acquirements take all their value and character from 
the power of the individual storing them. Let us take, 
from amongst Gray's observations on what he read, enough 
to show us his power. Here are criticisms on three very 
different authors, criticisms without any study or preten- 



THOMAS GRAY. 3I9 

sion, but just thrown out in chance letters to his friends. 
First, on Aristotle : — 

' ' In the first place he is the hardest author by far I ever med- 
dled with. Then he has a dry conciseness that makes one im- 
agine one is perusing a table of contents rather than a book ; it 
tastes for all the world like chopped hay, or rather like chopped 
logic; for he has a violent afi'ection to that art, being in some 
sort his own invention ; so that he often loses himself in little 
trifling distinctions and verbal niceties, and what is worse, leaves 
you to extricate yourself as you can. Thirdly, he has suffered 
Tastly by his transcribers, as all authors of great brevity neces- 
sarily must. Fourthly and lastly, he has abundance of fine, 
uncommon things, which make him w^ell worth the pains he 
gives one. You see what you have to expect.'* 

Next, on Isocrates : — 

" It would be strange if I should find fault with you for read- 
ing Isocrates ; I did so myself twenty years ago, and in an 
edition at least as bad as yours. The Panegyric, the De Pace, 
Areopagitic, and Advice to Philip, are by far the noblest remains 
we have of this writer, and equal to most things extant in the 
Greek tongue ; but it depends on your judgment to distinguish 
between his real and occasional opinion of things, as he directly 
contradicts in one place what he has advanced in another ; for 
example, in the Panathenaic and the De Pace, on the naval power 
of Athens ; the latter of the two is undoubtedly his own undis- 
guised sentiment." 

After hearing Gray on Isocrates and Aristotle, let us hear 
him on Froissart : — 

" I rejoice you have met with Froissart, he is the Herodotus of 
a barbarous age ; had he but had the luck of writing in as good 
a language, he might have been immortal. His locomotive dis- 
position (for then there w-as no other way of learning things), 
his simple curiosity, his religious credulity, were much like those 
of the old Grecian. When you have tant chevauche as to get to 
the end of him, there is Monstrelet waits to take you up, and 
will set you down at Philip de Commines ; but previous to all 
these, you should have read Villehardouin and Joinville." 

Those judgments, with their true and clear ring, evince 
the high quality of Gray's mind, his power to command 
and use. his learning. But Gray was a poet ; let us hear 



320 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

liim on a poet, on Shakespeare. We must place ourselves 
in the full midst of the eighteenth century and of its 
criticism : Gray's friend, West, had praised Eacine for 
using it in his dramas *^the language of the times and 
that of the purest sort " ; and he had added : *' I will not 
decide what style is fit for our English stage, but I should 
rather choose one that bordered upon Cato, than upon 
Shakespeare.^' Gray replies : — 

"As to matter of style, I have this to say : The language of 
the age is never the language of poetry ; except among the 
French, whose verse, where the thought does not support it, 
differs in nothing from prose. Our poetry, on the contrary, has 
a language peculiar to itself, to which almost every one that 
has written has added something. In truth, Shakespeare's lan- 
guage is one of his principal beauties ; and he has no less ad- 
vantage over your Addisons and Rowes in this, than in those 
other great excellences you mention. Every word in him is a 
picture. Pray put me the following lines into the tongue of our 
modern dramatics — 

" * But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, 
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass ' — 

and what follows ? To me they appear untranslatable ; and if 
this be the case, our language is greatly degenerated." 

It is impossible for a poet to lay down the rules of his 
own art with more insight, soundness, and certainty. 
Yet at that moment in England there was perhaps not 
one other man, besides Gray, capable of writing the pas- 
sage just quoted. 

Gray's quality of mind, then, we see ; his quality of 
soul will no less bear inspection. His reserve, his deli- 
cacy, his distaste for many of the persons and things sur- 
rounding him in the Cambridge of that day, — ^Hhis silly, 
dirty place," as he calls it, — have produced an impression 
of Gray as being a man falsely fastidious, finical, effemi- 
nate. Bnt we have already had that grave testimony to 
him from the Master of Pembroke Hall : ^^The thoughts I 
have of him will last, and will be useful to me the few 
y.ears I can expect to live." And here is another to the 



THOMAS GRAY. 321 

same effect from a younger man, from Gray's friend 
Nicholls : — 

•' You know," he writes to his mother, from abroad, when he 
heard of Gray's death, " that I considered Mr. Gray as a second 
parent, that I thought only of him, built all my happiness on 
him, talked of him forever, wished him with me whenever I 
partook of any pleasure, and flew to him for revenge whenever 
I felt any uneasiness. To whom now shall I talk of all I have 
seen here ? Who will teach me to read, to think, to feel ? I pro- 
test to you, that whatever I did or tliought had a reference to 
him. If I met with any chagrins, I comforted myself that I 
had a treasure at home ; if all the world had despised and hated 
me, I should have thought myself perfectly recompensed in his 
friendship. There remains only one loss more ; if I lose you, I 
am left alone in the world. At present I feel that I have lost 
half of myself." 

Testimonies such as these are not called forth by a fas- 
tidious effeminate weakling ; they are not called forth, 
even, by mere qualities of mind ; they are called forth by 
qualities of soul. And of Gray's high qualities of soul, of 
his (T7zou3ai6Tr]?f his excellent seriousness, we may gather 
abundant proof from his letters. Writing to Mason who 
had just lost his father, he says : — 

" I have seen the scene you describe, and know how dreadful 
it is ; I know too I am the better for it. We are all idle and 
thoughtless things, and have no sense, no use in the world any 
longer than that sad impression lasts ; the deeper it is engraved 
the better." 

And again, on a like occasion to another friend : — 

" He who best knows our nature (for he made us what we are) 
by such afflictions recalls us from our wandering thoughts and 
idle merriment, from the insolence of youth and prosperity, to 
serious reflection, to our duty, and to himself; nor need we 
hasten to get rid of these impressions. Time (by appointment 
of the same Power) will cure the smart and in some hearts soon 
blot out all the traces of sorrow ; but such as preserve them 
longest (for it is partly left in our own power) do perhaps best 
acquiesce in the will of the chastiser." 

And once more to Mason, in the very hour of his wife's 

21 



322 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

death ; Gray was not sure whether or not his letter would 
reach Mason before the end : — 

"If the worst be not yet past, you will neglect and pardon 
me ; but if the last struggle be over, if the poor object of your 
long anxieties be no longer sensible to your kindness or to her 
own sufferings, allow me, at least an idea (for what could I do, 
were I present, more than this ?) to sit by you in silence and pity 
from my heart not her, who is at rest, but you, who lose her. 
May he, who made us, the Master of our pleasures and of our 
pains, support you ! Adieu." 

Seriousness, character, was the foundation of things 
with him ; where this was lacking he was always severe, 
whatever might be offered to him in its stead. Voltaire's 
literary genius charmed him, but the faults of Voltaire's 
nature he felt so strongly that when his young friend 
Nicholls was going abroad in 1771, just before Gray's 
death, he said to him : ^^ I have one thing to beg of you 
which you must not refuse." Nicholls answered : *' You 
know you have only to command; what isit?^' — *^Do 
not go to see Voltaire," said Gray ; and then added : 
^^ No one knows the mischief that man will do." Nicholls 
promised compliance with Gray's injunction ; ^^But 
what," he asked, ^' could a visit from me signify?" — 
'^ Every tribute to such a man signifies," Gray answered. 
He admired Dryden, admired him, even, too much ; had 
too much felt his influence as a poet. He told Beattie 
*^ that if there was any excellence in his own numbers he 
had learned it wholly from that great poet ; " and writing 
to Beattie afterwards he recurs to Dryden, whom Beattie, 
he thought, did not honor as a poet : ^' Eemember Dry- 
den," he writes, " and be blind to all his faults." Yes, his 
faults as a poet ; but on the man Dryden, nevertheless, his 
sentence is stern. Speaking of the Poet-Laureateship, 
'* Dryden," he writes to Mason, " was as disgraceful to 
the office from his character, as the poorest scribbler could 
have been from his verses. Even where crying blemishes 
were absent, the want of weight and depth of character 
in a man deprived him, in Gray's judgment, of serious sig- 
nificance. He says of Hume : '*Is not that naivete and 



THOMAS GRAY. 323 

good-humor, which his admirers celebrate in him, owing 
to this, that he has continued all his days an infant, but 
one that has unhappily been taught to read and write ? " 
And with all this strenuous seriousness, a pathetic senti- 
ment, and an element, likewise, of sportive and charming 
humor. At Keswick, by the lakeside on an autumn eve- 
ning, he has the accent of the Reveries, or of Obermann, or 
Wordsworth : — 

" In the evening walked down alone to the lake by the side of 
Crow Park after sunset and saw the solemn coloring of light 
draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hill-tops, 
the deep serene of the waters, and the long shadows of the moun- 
tains thrown across them, till they nearly touched the hitlier- 
most shore. At a distance heard the murmur of many water- 
falls, not audible in the daytime. Wished for the Moon, but 
she was dark to me and silent hid in her vacant interlunar 
cave" 

Of his humor and sportiveness his delightful letters are 
full ; his humor appears in his poetry too, and is by no 
means to be passed over there. Horace Walpole said that 
" Gray never wrote anything easily but things of humor ; 
humor was his natural and original turn." 

Knowledge, penetration, seriousness, sentiment, humor. 
Gray had them all ; he had the equipment and endowment 
for the office of poet. But very soon in his life appear 
traces of something obstructing, something disabling ; of 
spirits failing, and health not sound ; and the evil in- 
creases with years. He writes to West in 1737 : — 

" Low spirits are my true and faithful companions ; they get 
up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I 
do ; nay, pay visits and will even affect to be jocose and force a 
feeble laugh with me ; but most commonly we sit alone together, 
and are the prettiest insipid company in the world." 

The tone is playful. Gray was not yet twenty-one. 
''Mine," he tells West four or five years later, ''mine, 
you are to know, is a white Melancholy, or rather Leuco- 
choly, for the most part ; which, though it seldom laughs 
or dances, nor ever amounts to what one calls joy or 



324: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

pleasure, yet is a good "easy sort of a state." But, he adds 
in the same letter : — 

" But there is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and 
then felt, that has something in it like Tertullian's rule of faith, 
Credo quia impossibile est ; for it believes, nay, is sure of every, 
thing that is unlikely, so it be but frightful ; and on the other hand 
excludes and shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and every- 
thing that is pleasurable ; from this the Lord deliver us ! for 
none but he and sunshiny weather can do it. " 

Six or seven years pass, and we find him writing to 
Wharton from Cambridge thus : — 

" The spirit of laziness (the spirit of this place) begins to pos- 
sess even me, that have so long declaimed against it. Yet has it 
not so prevailed, but that I feel that discontent with myself, 
that ennui, that ever accompanies it in its beginnings. Time 
will settle my conscience, time will reconcile my languid com- 
panion to me ; we shall smoke, we shall tipple, we shall doze 
together, we shall have our little jokes, like other people, and 
our long stories. Brandy will finish what port began ; and, a 
month after the time, you will see in some corner of a London 
Evening Post, 'Yesterday died the Rev. Mr. John Gray, Senior- 
Fellow of Clare Hall, a facetious companion, and well-respected 
by all who knew him.' " 

The humorous advertisement ends, in the original letter, 
with a Hogarthian touch which I must not quote. Is it 
Leucocholy or is it Melancholy which predominates here ? 
at any rate, this entry in his diary, six years later, is black 
enough : — 

" Insomnia crebra, atque expergiscenti surdus quidam doloris 
sensus ; frequens etiam in regione sterni oppressio, et cardialgia 
gravis, fere sempiterna.'' 

And in 1757 he writes to Hurd : — 

" To be employed is to be happy. This principle of mine (and 
I am convinced of its truth) has, as usual, no influence on my 
practice. I am alone, and ennuye to the last degree, yet do 
nothing. Indeed I have no excuse ; my health (which you have 
so kindly inquired after) is not extraordinary. It is no great 
malady, but several little ones, that seem brewing no good to 
me." 

From thence to the end his languor and depression, 



THOMAS GRAY. 325 

thongh still often relieved by occupation and travel, keep 
fatally gaining on him. At last the depression became 
constant, became mechanical. ^^ Travel I must," he 
writes to Dr. Wharton, '' or cease to exist. Till this year 
I hardly knew what mechanical low spirits were ; but now 
I even tremble at an east wind." Two months afterwards 
he died. 

What wonder, that with this troublous cloud, throughout 
the whole term of his manhood, brooding over him and 
weighing him down. Gray, finely endowed though he was, 
richly stored with knowledge though he was, yet produced 
so little, found no full and sufficient utterance, ''never,'' 
as the Master of Pembroke Hall said, '' S2:)oke out." He 
knew well enough, himself, how it was with him. 

'' My verve is at best, you know " (he writes to Mason), 
*'of so delicate a constitution, and has such weak nerves, 
as not to stir out of its chamber above three days in a 
year." And to Horace WaljDole he says : '' As to what you 
say to me civilly, that I ought to write more, I will be 
candid, and avow to you, that till fourscore and upward, 
whenever the humor takes me, I will write ; because I 
like it, and because 1 like myself better when I do so. If 
I do not write much, it is because I cannot." How simply 
said, and how truly also ! Fain would a man like Gray 
speak out if he could, he '' likes himself better" when he 
speaks out ; if he does not speak out, '' it is" because I 
cannot." 

Bonstetten, that mercurial Swiss who died in 1832 at 
the age of eighty-seven, having been younger and livelier 
from his sixtieth year to his eightieth than at any other 
time in his life, paid a visit in his early days to Cambridge, 
and saw much of Gray, to whom he attached himself with 
devotion. Gray, on his part, was charmed with his young 
friend ', '^1 never saw such a boy," he writes ; "our breed 
is not made on this model." Long afterwards Bonstetten 
published his reminiscences of Gray. " I used to tell 
Gray," he says, " about my life and my native country, 
but Ms life was a sealed book to me ; he never would 
talk of himself, never would allow me to speak to him of 



326 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

his poetry. If I quoted lines of liis to him, he kept 
silence like an obstinate child. I said to him sometimes : 
* Will you have the goodness to give me an answer ? ' 
But not a word issued from his lips." He 7iever spoke out. 
Bonstetten thinks that Gray^s life was poisoned by an un- 
satisfied sensibility, was withered by his having never 
loved ; by his days being passed in the dismal cloisters of 
Cambridge, in the company of a set of monastic book- 
worms, '* whose existence no honest woman ever came to 
cheer." Sainte-Beuve, who was much attracted and in- 
terested by Gray, doubts whether Bonstetten's explanation 
of him is admissible ; the secret of Gray's melancholy he 
finds rather in the sterility of his poetic talent, '^so dis- 
tinguished, so rare, but so stinted ; " in the poet's despair 
at his own unproductiveness. 

But to explain Gray, we must do more than allege his 
sterility, as we must look further than to his reclusion at 
Cambridge. What caused his sterility ? AYas it his ill- 
health, his hereditary gout ? Certainly we will pay all 
respect to the powers of hereditary gout for afflicting us 
poor mortals. But Goethe, after pointing out that Schil- 
ler, who was so productive, was "^almost constantly ill," 
adds the true remark that it is incredible how much the 
spirit can do, in these cases, to keep up the body. Pope's 
animation and activity through all the course of what he 
pathetically calls '^ that long disease, my life," is an ex- 
ample presenting itself signally, in Gray's own country 
and time, to confirm what Goethe here says. What gave 
the power to Gray's reclusion and ill-health to induce his 
sterility ? 

The reason, the indubitable reason as I cannot but think 
it, I have already given elsewhere. Gray, a born poet, fell 
upon an age of prose. He fell upon an age whose task 
was such as to call forth in general men's powers of under- 
standing, wit and cleverness, rather than their deepest 
powers of mind and soul. As regards literary production, 
the task of the eighteenth century in England was not the 
poetic interpretation of the world, its task was to create 
a plain, clear, straightforward, efficient prose. Poetry 



THOMAS GRAY. 327 

obeyed the bent of mind requisite for the due fulfilment 
of this task of the century. It was intellectual, argumen- 
tative, ingenious ; not seeing things in their truth and 
beauty, not interpretative. Gray, with the qualities of 
mind and soul of a genuine poet, was isolated in his cen- 
tury. Maintaining and fortifying them by lofty studies, 
he yet could not fully educe and enjoy them ; the want of 
a genial atmosphere, the failure of sympathy in his con- 
temporaries, were too great. Born in the same year with 
Milton, Gray would have been another man ; born in the 
same year with Burns, he would have been another man. 
A man born in 1608 could profit by the larger and more 
poetic scope of the English spirit in the Elizabethan age ; 
a man born in 1759 could profit by that European renew- 
ing of men's minds of which the great historical manifes- 
tation is the French Revolution. Gray's alert and bril- 
liant young friend, Bonstetten, who would explain the 
void in the life of Gray by his having never loved, Bon- 
stetten himself loved, married, and had children. Yet at 
the age of fifty he was bidding fair to grow old, dismal and 
torpid like the rest of us, when he was roused and made 
young again for some thirty years, says M. Sainte-Beuve, 
by the events of 1789. If Gray, like Burns, had been just 
thirty years old when the French Eevolution broke out, 
he would have shown, probably, productiveness and ani- 
mation in plenty. Coming when he did, and endowed as 
he was, he was a man born out of date, a man whose full 
spiritual flowering was impossible. The same thing is to 
be said of his great contemporary, Butler, the author of 
the Analogy. In the sphere of religion, which touches 
that of poetry, Butler was impelled by the endowment of 
his nature to strive for a profound and adequate concep- 
tion of religious things, which was not pursued by his con- 
temporaries, and which at that time, and in that atmos- 
phere of mind, was not fully attainable. Hence, in Butler 
too, a dissatisfaction, a weariness, as in Gray; *' great 
labor and weariness, great disappointment, pain and even 
vexation of mind." A sort of spiritual east wind was at 



328 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

that time blowing ; neither Butler nor Gray could flower. 
They never' spoke oid. 

Gray's poetry was not only stinted in quantity by reason 
of the age wherein he lived, it suffered somewhat in qual- 
ity also. We have seen under wh-at obligation to Dryden 
Gray professed himself to be — '• if there was any excellence 
in his numbers, he had learned it wholly from that great 
poet." It was not for nothing that he came when Dryden 
had lately ** embellished," as Johnson says, English poetry ; 
had ^^ found it brick and left it marble." It was not for 
nothing that he came just when '^ the English ear," to 
quote Johnson again, '•'' had been accustomed to the mel- 
lifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction of poetry had 
grown more splendid." Of the intellectualities, ingenu- 
ities, personifications, of the movement and diction of 
Dryden and Pope, Gray caught something, caught too 
much. We have little of Gray's poetry, and that little is 
not free from the faults of his age. Therefore it was im- 
portant to go for aid, as we did, to Gray's life and letters, 
to see his mind and soul there, and to corroborate from 
thence that high estimate of his quality which his poetry 
indeed calls forth, bat does not establish so amply and 
irresistibly as one could desire. 

For a just criticism it does, however, clearly establish 
it. The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry 
of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this : their 
poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine 
poetry is conceived and composed in the soul. The difference 
between the two kinds of poetry is immense. They differ 
profoundly in their modes of language, they differ pro- 
foundly in their modes of evolution. The poetic language 
of our eighteenth century in general is the language of 
men composing ivWiout their eye on the ohject, as Worvls- 
worth excellently said of Dryden ; language merely re- 
calling the object, as the common language of prose 
does, and then dressing it out with a certain smartness 
and brilliancy for the fancy and understanding. This is 
called ^^ splendid diction." The evolution of the poetry of 
our eighteenth century is likewise intellectual ; it proceeds 



THOMAS GRAY. 329 

by ratiocination, antithesis, ingenious turns and conceits. 
This poetry is often eloquent, and always, in the hands of 
such masters as Dryden and Pope, clever ; but it does not 
take us much below the surface of things, it does not give 
us the emotion of seeing things in their truth and beauty. 
The language of genuine poetry, on the other hand, is the 
language of one composing with his eye on the object ; its 
evolution is that of a thing which has been plunged in the 
poet's soul until it comes forth naturally and necessarily. 
This sort of evolution is infinitely simpler than the other, 
and infinitely more satisfying ; the same thing is true of 
the genuine poetic language likewise. But they are both 
of them also infinitely harder of attainment ; they come 
only from those who, as Emerson says, '' live from a great 
depth of being." 

Goldsmith disjDaraged Gray who had praised his Traveller, 
and indeed in the poem on the Alliance of Education and 
Government had given him hints which he used for it. 
In retaliation let us take from Goldsmith himself a speci- 
men of the poetic language of the eighteenth century. 

*' No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale" — 

there is exactly the poetic diction of our prose century ! 
rhetorical, ornate, — and, poetically, quite false Place 
beside it a line of genuine poetry, such as the 

*' In cradle of the rude, imperious surge 

of Shakespeare ; and all its falseness instantly becomes 
apparent. 

Dryden's poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew is, says 
Johnson, '' undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language 
ever has produced." In this vigorous performance Dryden 
has to say, what is interesting enough, that not only in 
poetry did Mrs. Killigrew excel, but she excelled in 
painting also. And thus he says it — 

*' To the next realm she stretch'd her sway, 
For Painture near adjoining lay — 
A plenteous province and alluring prey. 



330 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

A Chamber of Dependencies was framed 
(As conquerors will never want pretence 
When arm'd, to justify the offence), 
And the whole fief, in right of Poetry, she claim'd." 

The intellectnal, ingenious, superficial evolution of poetry 
of this school could not be better illustrated. Place beside 
it Pindar's 

oux 'iyevr ovr Aiaxcdo izapa IlrjX 
oore Tzap dvrtdiuj Kddfxoj ... 

*'A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of 
JEacus, nor of the godlike Cadmus ; howbeit these are said to 
have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard 
the golden-snooded Muses sing, — on the mountain the one heard 
them, the other in seven-gated Thebes.'" 

There is the evolution of genuine poetry, and such poetry 
kills Dryden^s the moment it is put near it. 

Gray's production was scanty, and scanty, as we have 
seen, it could not but be. Even what he produced is not 
always pure in diction, true in evolution. Still, with 
whatever drawbacks, he is alone, or almost alone (for Collins 
has something of the like merit) in his age. Gray said 
himself that the style he aimed at was extreme concise- 
ness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical." 
Compared, not with the work of the great masters of the 
golden ages of poetry, but with the poetry of his own con- 
temporaries in general, Gray's may be said to have reached, 
in style, the excellence at which he aimed ; while the evo- 
lution also of such a piece as his Progress of Poesy must 
be accounted not less noble and sound than its style. 



XIV. 
JOHN KEATS/ 

Poetry, according to Milton's famous saying, should be 
** simple, sensuous, impassioned." Ko one can question 
the eminency, in Keats's poetry, of the quality of sen- 
suousness. Keats as a poet is abundantly and encliant- 
ingly sensuous ; the question with some people will be, 
whether he is anything else. Many things may be brought 
forward which seem to show him as under the fascination 
and sole dominion of sense, and desiring nothing better. 
There is the exclamation in one of his letters : ^^0 for a 
life of sensations rather than of thoughts ! " There is 
the thesis, in another, ^' that with a great Poet the sense 
of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather 
obliterates all consideration." There is Haydon's story of 
him, how ^^he once covered his tongue and throat as far 
as he could reach with Cayenne pepper, in order to ap- 
preciate the delicious coldness of claret in all its glory — 
his own expression." One is not much surprised when 
Haydon further tells us, of the hero of such a story, that 
once for six weeks together he was hardly ever sober. 
*' He had no decision of character," Haydon adds; ^* no 
object upon which to direct his great powers." 

Character and self-control, the virtus verusqiie la'bor so 
necessary for every kind of greatness, and for the great 
artist, too, indispensable, appear to be wanting, certainly, 
to this Keats of Hay don's portraiture. They are wanting 
also to the Keats of the Letters to Fanny Brawne. These 

1 Prefixed to the Selection from Keats in Ward's English Poets, 
vol. iv. 1880. 

331 



332 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

letters make as impleasing an impression as Haydon's 
anecdotes. The editor of Haydon's journals could not 
well omit what Haydon said of his friend, but for the 
publication of the Letters to Fanny Brawne I can see no 
good reason whatever. Their publication appears to me, 
I confess, inexcusable ; they ought never to have been 
published. But published they are, and we have to take 
notice of them. Letters written when Keats was near 
his end, under the throttling and unmanning grasp of 
mortal disease, we will not judge. But here is a letter 
written some months before he was taken ill. It is 
printed just as Kep.ts wrote it. 

"You have absorb'd me. I haye a sensation at the present 
moment as though I was dissolving — I should be exquisitely 
miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be 
afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will 
your heart never change ? My love, will it ? I have no limit 
now to my love. . . . Your note came in just here. I cannot be 
happier away from you. 'Tis richer than an Argosy of Pearles. 
Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men 
could die Martyrs for religion — I have shuddered at it. I shud- 
der no more — I could be martyred for my Religion — Love is my 
religion — I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is 
Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravished me away 
by a Power I cannot resist ; and yet I could resist till I saw you ; 
and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often ' to 
reason against the reasons of my Love.' I can do that no more 
— the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot 
breathe without you." 

A man who writes love-letters in this strain is probably 
predestined, one may observe, to misfortune in his love- 
affairs ; but that is nothing. The complete enervation of 
the writer is the real point for remark. AYe have the 
tone, or rather the entire want of tone, the abandonment 
of all reticence and all dignity, of the merely sensuous 
man, of the man who ^^is passion's slave." Nay, we have 
them in such wise that one is tempted to speak even as 
Blackwood or the Quarterly were in the old days wont to 
speak ; one is tempted to say that Keats's love-letter is the 
love-letter of a surgeon's apprentice. It has in its relaxed 



JOHN KEATS. 333 

self-abandonment something underbred and ignoble, as of 
a youth ill brought up, without the training which teaches 
us that we must put some constraint upon our feelings 
and upon the expression of them. It is the sort of love- 
letter of a surgeon's apprentice which one might hear 
read out in a breach of promise case, or in the Divorce 
Court. The sensuous man speaks in it, and the sensuous 
man of a badly bred and badly trained sort. That many 
who are themselves also badly bred and badly trained 
should enjoy it, and should even think it a beautiful and 
characteristic production of him whom they call their 
^^ lovely and beloved Keats," does not make it better. 
These are the admirers whose pawing and fondness does 
not good but harm to the fame of Keats ; who concen- 
trate attention upon what in him is least wholesome and 
most questionable ; who worship him, and would have 
the world worship him too, as the poet of 

' Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair, 
Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast. 

This sensuous strain Keats had, and a man of his poetic 
powers could not, whatever his strain, but show his talent 
in it. But he has something more, and something better. 
We who believe Keats to have been by his promise, at 
any rate, if not fully by his performance, one of the very 
greatest of English poets, and who believe also that a 
merely sensuous man cannot either by promise or by per- 
formance be a very great poet, because poetry interprets 
life, and so large and noble a part of life is outside of such 
a man's ken, — we cannot but look for signs in him of 
something more than sensuousness, for signs of character 
and virtue. And indeed the elements of high character 
Keats undoubtedly has, and the effort to develop them ; 
the effort is frustrated and cut short by misfortune, and 
disease, and time, but for the due understanding of 
Keats's worth the recognition of this effort, and of the 
elements on which it worked, is necessary. 

Lord Houghton, who praises very discriminatingly the 



334 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM, 

poetry of Keats, has on his character also a remark full 
of discrimination. He says : '^ The faults of Keats's dis- 
position were precisely the contrary of those attributed to 
liim by common opinion." And he gives a letter written 
after the death of Keats by his brother George, in which 
the writer, speaking of the fantastic Johnny Keats invented 
for common opinion by Lord Byron and by the reviewers, 
declares indignantly : ^' John was the very soul of manli- 
ness and courage, and as much like the Holy Ghost as 
Johnny Keats,'''' It is important to note this testimony, 
and to look well for whatever illustrates and confirms it. 

Great weight is laid by Lord Houghton on such a direct 
profession of faith as the following : '' That sort of probity 
and disinterestedness," Keats writes to his brothers, 
'^ which such men as Bailey possess, does hold and grasp 
the tip-top of any spiritual honors that can be paid to any- 
thing in this world." Lord Houghton saj^s that *' never 
have words more effectively expressed the conviction of 
the superiority of virtue above beauty than those." But 
merely to make a profession of faith of the kind here 
made by Keats is not difficult ; what we should rather 
look for is some evidence of the instinct for character, for 
virtue, passing into man's life, passing into his work. 

Signs of virtue, in the true and large sense of the word, 
the instinct for virtue passing into the life of Keats and 
strengthening it, I find in the admirable wisdom and 
temper of what he says to his friend Bailey on the occasion 
of a quarrel between Reynolds and Haydon : — 

"Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must 
have heard of them ; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recrim- 
inating, and parting forever. The same thing has happened be- 
tween Haydon and Hunt. It is unfortunate ; men should bear 
with each other ; there lives not the man who may not be cut up, 
aj'e, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have 
but a portion of good in them. . . . The sure waj^ Bailey, is first 
to know a man's faults, and then be passive. If, after that, he 
insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no powder to 
break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or 
Haydon, I was well read in their faults ; yet, knowing them, I 
have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for 



JOHN KEATS. 335 

them both, for reasons almost opposite ; and to both must I of ne- 
cessity cling, supported always by the hope that when a little time, 
a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may 
be able to bring them together." 

Butler has well said that '^endeavoring to enforce upon our 
own minds a practical sense of virtue, or to beget in others 
that practical sense of it which a man really has himself, is 
a virtuous act.^' And such an " endeavoring " is that of 
Keats in those words written to Bailey. It is more than 
mere words ; so justly thought and so discreetly urged as 
it is, it rises to the height of a virtuous act. It is proof of 
character. 

The same thing may be said of some words written to his 
friend Charles Brown, whose kindness, willingly exerted 
whenever Keats chose to avail himself of it, seemed to free 
him from any pressing necessity of earning his own living. 
Keats felt that he must not allow this state of things to 
continue. He determined to set himself to ^'fag on as 
others do " at periodical literature, rather than to endanger 
his independence and his self-respect ; and he writes to 
Brown : — 



" I had got into a habit of mind of looking towards you as a help 
in all difficulties. This very habit would be the parent of idleness 
and difficulties. You will see it is a duty I owe to myself to 
break the neck of it. I do nothing for my subsistence — make no 
exertion. At the end of another year you shall applaud me, not 
for verses, but for conduct." 

He had not, alas, another year of health before him 
when he announced that wholesome resolve ; it then 
wanted but six months of the day of his fatal attack. But 
in the brief time allowed to him he did what he could to 
keep his word. 

What character, again, what strength and clearness of 
judgment, in his criticism of his own productions, of the 
public, and of the '^ literary circles ! " His words after the 
severe reviews of Endymion have often been quoted ; they 
cannot be quoted too often : — 



336 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

*' Praise or blame has but a momentary effection the man whose 
love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his 
own works. My own criticism has given me pain without com- 
parison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possibly 
inflict; and also, when I feel lam right, no external praise 
can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and 
ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to 
the " slip-shod Endymion." That it is so is no fault of mine. 
No ! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I 
had power to make it by myself." 

And again, as if he had foreseen certain of his admirers 
gushing over him, and was resolved to disengage his 
responsibility : — 

" I have done nothing, except for the amusement of a few people 
who refine upon their feelings till anything in the un-understand- 
able way will go down with them. I have no cause to complain, be- 
cause I am certain anything really fine will in these days be felt. 
I have no doubt that if I had written Othello I should have been 
cheered. I shall go on with patience." 

Young poets almost inevitably overrate what they call 
" the might of poesy/' and its power over the world which 
now is. Keats is not a dupe on this matter any more than 
he is a dupe about the merit of his own performances : — 

" I have no trust whatever in poetry. I don't wonder at it ; 
the marvel is to me how people read so much of it." 

His attitude towards the public is that of a strong man, 
not of a weakling avid of praise, and made to ^^ be snuff d 
out by an article " : — 

" I shall ever consider the public as debtors to me for verses, 
not myself to them for admiration, which can I do without." 

And again, in a passage where one may perhaps find 
fault with the capital letters, but surely with nothing 
else : — 

' ' I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public or 
to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of 
Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. ... I would be subdued 
before my friends, and tliank them for subduing me ; but among 



JOHN KEATS. 337 

multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping ; I hate the idea of 
humility to them. I never wrote one single line of poetry with 
the least shadow of thought about their opinion. Forgive me for 
vexing you, but it eases me to tell you ; I could not live without 
the love of my friends : I would jump down Etna for any great 
public good — but I hate a mawkish popularity. I cannot be sub- 
dued before them. My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the 
thousand jabberers about pictures and books." 

Against these artistic and literary ^'jabberers/' amongst 
whom Byron fancied Keats, probably, to be always living, 
flattering them and flattered by them, he has yet another 
outburst : — 

" Just so much as 1 am humbled by the genius above my grasp, 
am I exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary 
world. Wlio could wish to be among the commonplace crowd of 
the little famous, who are each individually lost in a throng made 
up of themselves ? " 

And he loves Fanny Brawne the more, he tells her, be- 
cause he believes that she has linked him for his own sake 
and for nothing else. ^'1 have met with women who I 
really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be 
given away by a Novel." 

There is a tone of too much bitterness and defiance in 
all this, a tone which he with great propriety subdued and 
corrected when he wrote his beautiful j^reface to Endym- 
ion. But the thing to be seized is^ that Keats had flint 
and iron in him, that he had character ; that he was, as 
his brother George says, *^ as much like the Holy Ghost as 
Johnny Keats," — as that imagined sensuous weakling, the 
delight of the literary circles of Hampstead. 

It is a pity that Byron, who so misconceived Keats, 
should never have known how shrewdly Keats, on the 
other hand, had characterized him, as '' a fine thing '^ in 
the sphere of ''the worldly, theatrical, and pantomimi- 
cal." But indeed nothing is more remarkable in Keats 
than his clear-sightedness, his lucidity ; and lucidity is in 
itself akin to character and to high and severe work. In 
spite, therefore, of his overpowering feeling for beauty, in 



33S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

spite of his sensuousness, in spite of his facility, in spite 
of his gift of expression, Keats could say resolutely : — 

" I know nothing, I have read nothing ; and I mean to follow 
Solomon's directions: 'Get learning, get understanding.' 
There is but one way for me. The road lies through application, 
study, and thought. I will pursue it." 

And of Milton, instead of resting in Milton's incompar- 
able phrases, Keats could say, although indeed all the 
while *^ looking upon fine phrases," as he himself tells us, 
*^like a lover" — ■ 

'' Milton had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the 
sense of ease and pleasure, poetical luxury ; and with that, it 
appears to me, he would fain have been content, if he could, so 
doing, preserve his self-respect and feeling of duty performed ; 
but there was working in him, as it were, that same sort of thing 
which operates in the great world to the end of a prophecy's 
being accomplished. Therefore he devoted himself rather to the 
ardors than the pleasures of song, solacing himself at intervals 
with cups of old wine." 

In his own poetry, too, Keats felt that place must be 
found for '^the ardors rather than the pleasures of 
song," although he was aware that he was not yet ripe for 
it— 

" But, my flag is not unfurl'd 
On the Admiral-staff, and to philosophize 
I dare not yet." 

Even in his pursuit of " the pleasures of song," how- 
ever, there is that stamp of high work which is akin to 
character, which is character passing into intellectual 
production. '' The test sort of poetry — that," he truly 
says, ^* is all I care for, all I live for." It is curious to 
observe how this severe addiction of his to the best sort 
of poetry affects him with a certain coldness, as if the 
addiction had been to mathematics, towards those prime 
obejcts of a sensuous and passionate poet's regard, love 
and women. He speaks of ^^ the opinion I have formed 
of the generality of women, who appear to me as children 
to whom I would rather give a sugar-plum than my time/' 



JOHN KEATS. 3.39 

He confesses ^' a tendency to class women in my books 
with roses and sweetmeats — they never see themselves 
dominant ; " and he can understand how the unpopularity 
of his poems may be in part due to ''the offense which 
the ladies," not unnaturally ''take at him " from this 
cause. Even to Fanny Brawne he can write " a flint- 
worded letter/' when his "mind is heaped to the full " 
with poetry : — 

"I know the generality of women would hate me for this: 
that I should have so unsoftened, so hard a mind as to forget 
them ; forget the brightest realities for the dull imaginations of 
my own brain. . . My heart seems now made of iron — I could 
not write a proper answer to an invitation to Idalia." 

The truth is that " the yearning passion for the Beau- 
tiful/' which was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the 
master-passion, is not a passion, of the sensuous or sen- 
timental man, is not a passion of the sensuous or senti- 
mental poet. It is an intellectual and spiritual passion. It 
is " connected and made one,'' as Keats declares that in 
his case it was, "with the ambition of the intellect/' It 
is, as he again says, '* the mighty abstract idea of Beauty 
in all things." And in his last days Keats wrote : " If I 
should die, I have left no immortal work behind me — 
nothing to make my friends proud of my memory ; hut 
Ihave loved the principle of leautij in all tilings, and if I 
had had time I would have made myself remembered." 
He has made himself remembered, and remembered as no 
merely sensuous poet could be ; and he has done it by 
having " loved the principle of beauty in all things." 

For to see things in their beauty is to see things in their 
truth, and Keats knew it. " What the Imagination 
seizes as Beauty must be Truth/' he says in prose ; and in 
immortal verse he has said the same thing — 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

No, it is not all ; but it is true, deeply true, and we 
have deep need to know it. And with beauty goes not 
only truth, joy goes with her also ; and this too Keats 



340 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

saw and said, as in the famous first line of his Endymion 
it stands written — 

** A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 

It is no small thing to have so loved the principle of 
beauty as to perceive the necessary relation of beauty with 
truth, and of both with joy. Keats was a great spirit, 
and counts for far more than many even of his admirers 
suppose, because this just and high perception made it- 
self clear to him. Therefore a dignity and a glory shed 
gleams over his life, and happiness, too, was not a stranger 
to it. *^ Nothing startles me beyond the moment," he 
says ; '' the setting sun will always set me to rights, or if 
a sparrow come before my window I take part in its ex- 
istence and pick about the gravel." But he had terrible 
bafflers, — consuming disease and early death. '^ I think," 
he writes to Eeynolds, ** if I had a free and healthy and 
lasting organization of heart, and lungs as strong as an 
ox's, so as to be able to bear unhurt the shock of extreme 
thought and sensation without weariness, I could pass my 
life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty years. 
But I feel my body too weak to support me to the height ; 
I am obliged continually to check myself, and be nothing." 
He had against him even more than this ; he had against 
him the blind power which we call Fortune. *^ that 
something fortunate," he cries in the closing months of 
his life, " had ever happened to me or my brothers ! — then 
I might hope, — but despair is forced upon me as a habit." 
So baffled and so sorely tried, — while laden, at the same 
time, with a mighty formative thought requiring health, 
and many days, and favoring circumstances, for its 
adequate manifestation, — what wonder if the achievement 
of Keats be partial and incomplete ? 

Nevertheless, let and hindered as he was, and with a 
short term and imperfect experience, — *^ young," as he 
says of himself, '*and writing at random, straining after 
particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, with- 
out knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one 
opinion," — notwithstanding all this, by virtue of his feel- 



JOHN KEATS. 34I 

ing for beauty and of his perception of the vital connection 
of beauty with truth, Keats accomplished so much in 
poetry, that in one of tlie two great modes by which poetry 
interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in 
what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare. 
" The tongue of Kean," he says in an admirable criticism 
of that great actor and of his enchanting elocution, ''the 
; tongue of Kean must seem to have robbed the Hvbla bees 
and left them honeyless. There is an indescribable gusto 
in his voice ; in Richard, ' Be stirring with the lark to- 
morrow, gentle Norfolk ! ' comes from him as through the 
morning atmosphere towards which he yearns." This 
magic, this '' indescribable gustoin the voice," Keats him- 
self, too, exhibits in his poetic expression. No one else 
in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression 
quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of 
loveliness. ''I think," he said humbly, '^ I shall be among 
the English poets after my death." He is ; he is with 
Shakespeare. 

For the second great half of poetic interpretation, for 
that faculty of moral interpretation which is in Shake- 
speare, and is informed by him with the same power of 
beauty as his naturalistic interpretation, Keats was not 
ripe. For the architectonics of poetry, the faculty which 
presides at the evolution of works like the Agamemnon or 
Lea7\ he Avas not ripe. His E7idymio7i, as he himself well 
saw, is a failure, and his Hyperion, fine things as it con- 
tains, is not a success. But in shorter things, where the 
matured power of moral interpretation, and the high archi- 
tectonics which go with complete poetic development, are 
not required, he is perfect. The poems which follow 
prove it, — prove it far better by themselves than anything 
which can be said about them will prove it. Therefore I 
have chiefly spoken here of the man, and of the elements 
in him which explain the production of such work. 
Shakespearian work it is ; not imitative, indeed, of Shake- 
speare, but Shakespearian, because its expression has that 
rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which 
Shakespeare is the great master. To show such work is 



342 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

to praise it. Let us now end by delighting ourselves with 
a fragment of it, too broken to find a place among the 
pieces which follow, but far too beautiful to be lost. It 
is a fragment of an ode for May-day. might I, he cries 
to May, might I 

"... thy smiles 
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, 
By bards who died content on pleasant sward, 
Leaving great verse unto a little clan ! 
O, give me their old vigor, and unheard 
Save of the quiet primrose, and the span 

Of heaven, and few years, 
Rounded by thee, my song should die away, 

Content as theirs. 
Rich in the simple worship of a day I '* 



XV. 

WOEDSWORTH/ 

I REMEMBER hearing Lord Macanlay say, after Words- 
worth's death, when subscriptions were being collected to 
found a memorial of him, that ten years earlier more money 
could have been raised in Cambridge alone, to do honor 
to Wordsworth, than was now raised all through the coun 
try. Lord Macaulay had, as we know, his own heightened 
and telling way of putting things, and we must always 
make allowance for it. But probably it is true that Words- 
worth has never, either before or since, been so accepted 
and popular, so established in possession of the minds of 
all who profess to care for poetry, as he was between the 
years 1830 and 1840, and at Cambridge. From the very 
first, no doubt, he had his believers and witnesses. But I 
have myself heard him declare that, for he knew not how 
many years, his poetry had never brought him in enough 
to buy his shoe-strings. The poetry-reading public was 
very slow to recognize him, and was very easily drawn 
away from him. Scott effaced him with this public^ 
Byron effaced him. 

The death of Byron, seemed, however, to make an open- 
ing for Wordsworth. Scott, who had for some time ceased 
to produce jDoetry himself, and stood before the public as 
a great novelist ; Scott, too genuine himself not to feel the 
profound genuineness of Wordsworth, and with an in- 
stinctive recognition of his firm hold on nature and of 
his local truth, always admired him sincerely, and praised 
him generously. The influence of Coleridge upon young 

1 The preface to The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited 
by Matthew Arnold, 1879. 

343 



344 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

men of ability was then powerful, and was still gathering 
strength ; this influence told entirely in favor of Words- 
worth^s poetry. Cambridge was a place where Coleridge's 
influence had great action, and where Wordsworth's 
poetry, therefore, flourished especially. But even amongst 
the general public its sale grew large, the eminence of its 
author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount became 
an object of pilgrimage. I remember Wordsworth rela- 
ting how one of the pilgrims, a clergyman, asked him if he 
had ever written anything besides the Guide to the Lakes. 
Yes, he answered modestly, he had written verses. Not 
every pilgrim was a reader, but the vogue was established 
and the stream of pilgrims came. 

Mr. Tennyson's decisive appearance dates from 1842. 
One cannot say that he effaced Wordsworth as Scott and 
Byron had effaced him. The poetry of Wordsworth had 
been so long before the public, the suffrage of good judges 
was so steady and so strong in its favor, that by 1842 the 
verdict of posterity, one may almost say, had been already 
pronounced, and Wordsworth's English fame was secure. 
But the vogue, the ear and applause of the great body of 
poetry-readers, never quite thoroughly perhaps his, he 
gradually lost more and more, and Mr. Tennyson gained 
them. Mr. Tennyson drew to himself, and away from 
Wordsworth, the poetry-reading public, and the new gener- 
ations. Even in 1850, when Wordsworth died, this dim- 
inution of popularity was visible, and occasioned the 
remark of Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting. 

The diminution has continued. The influence of Cole- 
ridge has waned, and Wordsworth's poetry can no longer 
draw succor from this ally. The poetry has not, however, 
wanted eulogists ; and it may be said to have brought its 
eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised 
Wordsworth's poetry has praised it well. But the public 
has remained cold, or, at least, undetermined. Even the 
abundance of Mr. Palgrave's fine and skilfully chosen 
specimens of Wordsworth's, in the Golden Treasury, sur- 
prised many readers, and gave offense to not a few. To 
tenth-rate critics and compilers, for whom any violent 



WORDSWORTH. 345 

shock to the public taste would be a temerity not to be 
risked, it is still quite permissible to speak of Wordsworth's 
poetry, not only with ignorance, but with impertinence. 
On the Continent he is almost unknown. 

I cannot think, then, that Wordsworth has, up to this 
time, at all obtained his deserts. " Glory,*' said M. Renan 
the other day, ''glory after all is the thing which has the 
best chance of not being altogether vanity." Wordsworth 
was a homely man, and himself would certainly never have 
thought of talking of glory as that which, after all, has 
the best chance of not being altogether vanity. Yet we 
may well allow that few things are less vain than real 
glory. Let us conceive of the whole group of civilized 
nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, 
one great confederation, bound to a joint action and work- 
ing towards a common result ; a confederation whose 
members have a due knowledge both of the past, out of 
which they all proceed, and of one another. This was 
the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will impose 
itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and 
more. Then to be recognized by the verdict of such 
a confederation as a master, or even as a seriously and 
eminently worthy workman, in one's own line of intellec- 
tual or spiritual activity, is indeed glory ; a glory which it 
would be difficult to rate too highly. For what could be 
more beneficent, more salutary ? The world is forwarded 
by having its attention fixed on the best things ; and here 
is a tribunal, free from all suspicion of national and pro- 
vincial partiality, putting a stamp on the best things, and 
recommending them for general honor and acceptance. 
A nation, again, is furthered by recognition of its real 
gifts and successes ; it is encouraged to develop them fur- 
ther. And here is an honest verdict, telling us which of 
our supposed successes are really, in the Judgment of the 
great impartial world, and not only in our own private 
judgment only, successes, and which are not. 

It is so easy to feel pride and satisfaction in one's own 
things, so hard to make sure that one is right in feeling 
it ! We have a great empire. But so had ^""ebuchadnez- 



346 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

zar. We extol the ^'unrivaled happiness " of our national 
civilization. But then comes a candid friend, and remarks 
that our upper class is materialized, our middle class vul- 
garized, and our lower class brutalized. We are proud of 
our painting, our music. But v/e find that in the judg- 
ment of other people our painting is questionable, and our 
music non-existent. We are proud of our men of science. 
And here it turns out that the world is with us ; we find 
that in the judgment of other people, too, Newton among 
the dead, and Mr. Darwin among the living, hold as high 
a place as they hold in our national opinion. 

Finally, we are proud of our poets and poetry. Now 
poetry is nothing less than the most perfect speech of 
man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter 
the truth. It is no small thing, therefore, to succeed em- 
inently in poetry. And so much is required for duly esti- 
mating success here, that about poetry it is perhaps hardest 
to arrive at a sure general verdict, and takes longest. 
Meanwhile, our own conviction of the superiority of our 
national poets is not decisive, is almost certain to be 
mingled, as we see constantly in English eulogy of Shake- 
speare, with much of provincial infatuation. And we 
know what was the opinion current amongst our neigh- 
bors the French — people of taste, acuteness, and quick 
literary tact — not a hundred years ago, about our great 
poets. The old Biogi'ajjJiie Universelle notices the preten- 
sion of the English to a place for their poets among the 
chief poets of the world, and says that this is a pretension 
which to no one but an Englishman can ever seem admis- 
sible. And the scornful, disparaging things said by 
foreigners about Shakespeare and Milton, and about our 
national over-estimate of them, have been often quoted, 
and will be in every one's remembrance. 

A great change has taken place, and Shakespeare is 
now generally recognized, even in France, as one of the 
greatest of poets. Yes, some anti-Gallican cynic will say, 
the French rank him with Corneille and with Victor 
Hugo ! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sen- 
tence about Shakespeare^ which I met with by accident 



WORDSWORTH. 347 

not long ago in the Correspondant, a French review which 
not a dozen English people, I suppose, look at. The 
writer is praising Shakespeare's prose. With Shake- 
speare, he says, ^' prose comes in whenever the subject, 
being more familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English 
iambic." And he goes on : ^"^ Shakespeare is the king of 
poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king of the realm 
of thought ; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare 
has succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most har- 
monious verse which has ever sounded upon the humane 
ear since the verse of the Greeks." M. Henry Cochin, the., 
writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for it ; it 
would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sen- 
tence, more justly. And when a foreigner and a French- 
man writes thus of Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of 
Milton, in whom there was so much to repel Goethe rather 
than to attract him, that '^nothing has been ever done so 
entirely in the sense of the Greeks as Samson Agonistes," 
and that " Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must 
treat with all reverence," then we understand what con- 
stitutes a European recognition of poets and poetry as 
contradistinguished from a merely national recognition, 
and that in favor both of Milton and of Shakespeare the 
judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone. 

I come back to M. Kenan's praise of glory, from which 
I started. Yes, real glory is a most serious thing, glory 
authenticated by the Amphictyonic Court of final appeal, 
definite glory. And even for poets and poetry, long and 
difficult as may be the process of arriving at the right 
award, the right award comes at last, the definite glory 
rests where it is deserved. Every establishment of such a 
real glory is good and wholesome for mankind at large, 
good and wholesome for the nation which produced the 
poet crowned with it. To the poet himself it can seldom 
do harm ; for he, poor man, is in his grave, probably, long 
before his glory crowns him. 

Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, 
and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter them- 
selves that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines 



348 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

over liim. He is not fully rpcognized at home ; lie is not 
recognized at all abroad. ("Yet I firmly believe that the 
poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shake- 
speare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes 
the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our lan- 
guage from the Elizabethan age to the present time. 
Chaucer is anterior ; and on other grounds, too, he can- 
not well be brought into the comparison, ^ut taking 
the roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare 
and Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and 
going through it, — Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Gold- 
smith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, 
Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are 
dead), — I think it certain that Wordsworth's name de- 
serves to stand, and will finally stand, above them all. 
Several of the poets named have gifts and excellences 
which Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance 
of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems to me to 
have left a body of poetical work superior in power, in 
interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, 
to that which any one of the others has left^^ 

But this is not enough to say. I think it certain, fur- 
ther, that if we take the chief poetical names of the Con- 
tinent since the death of Moliere, and, omitting Goethe, 
confront the remaining names with that of Wordsworth, 
the result is the same. Let us take Kloj)stock, Lessing, 
Schiller, Uhland, Eiickert, and Heine for Germany ; Fili- 
caia, Alfieri, Manzoni, and Leopard i for Italy ; Eacine, 
Boileau, Voltaire, Andre Chenier, Beranger, Lamartine, 
Musset, M. Victor Hugo (he has been so long celebrated 
that although he still lives I may be permitted to name 
him) for France. Several of these, again, have evidently 
gifts and excellences to which AVordsworth can make no 
pretension. But in real poetical achievement it seems to 
me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here again, belongs 
the palm. \It seems to me that Wordsworth has left be- 
hind him a body of poetical work which wears, and will 
wear, better on the whole than the performance of any 
one of these personag.es, so far more brilliant and cele- 



WORDSWORTH. 349 

brated, most of them, than the homely poet of Rydal. 
Wordsworth's performance in poetry is on the whole, in 
power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring 
freshness, superior to theirs. 

This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth. But if 
it is a just claim, if Wordsworth's place among the poets 
who have appeared in the last two or three centuries is 
after Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, Goethe, indeed, but 
before all the rest, then in time Wordsworth will have his 
due. We shall recognize him in his place, as we recog- 
nize Shakespeare and Milton ; and not only we ourselves 
shall recognize him, but he will be recognized by Europe 
also. Meanwhile, those who recognize him already may 
do well, perhaps, to ask themselves whether there are not 
in the case of Wordsworth certain special obstacles which 
hinder or delay his due recognition by others, and whether 
these obstacles are not in some measure removable. 

JThe Excursion and the Prelude, his poems of greatest 
bul^, are by no means Wordsworth's best work. His best 
work is in his shorter pieces, and many indeed are there 
of these which are of first-rate excellence. But in his 
seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with 
a mass of pieces very inferior to them ; so inferior to them 
that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have 
produced both. Shakespeare frequently has lines and 
passages in a strain quite false, and which are entirely un- 
worthy of him. But one can imagine him smiling if one 
could meet him in the Elyskn Fields and tell him so ; 
smiling and replying that he knew it perfectly well him- 
self, and what did it matter ? But with Wordsworth the 
case is different. Work altogether inferior, work quite 
uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident 
unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us 
with the same faith and seriousness as his best work?) 
Now a drama or an epic fill the mind, and one does not 
look beyond them ; but in a collection of short pieces the 
impression made by one piece requires to be continued 
and sustained by the piece following. Jn reading Words- 
worth the impression made by one of his fine pieces is too 



350 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

often dulled and spoiled by a very inferior piece coming 
after it^ 

(Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some 
sixty years ; and it is no exaggeration to say that within 
one single decade of those years^ between 1798 and 1808, 
almost all his really first-rate work was produced. A mass 
of inferior work remains, work done before and after this 
golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging 
it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfre- 
quently, the high-wrought mood with which we leave it. 
To be recognized far and wide as a great poet, to be pos- 
sible and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth needs to be 
relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage which now 
encumbers him. To administer this relief is indispensable, 
unless he is to continue to be a poet for the few only, — a 
poet valued far below his real worth by the world. 

There is another thing. Wordsworth classified his 
poems not according to any commonly received plan of 
arrangement, but according to a scheme of mental physio- 
logy. He has poems of the fancy, j^oems of the imagi- 
nation, poems of sentiment and reflection, and so on. His 
categories are ingenious but far-fetched, and the result 
of his employment of them is unsatisfactory. Poems are 
separated one from another which possess a kinship of 
subject or of treatment far more vital and deep than the 
supposed unity of mental origin, which was Wordsworth's 
reason for joining them with others. 

The tact of the Greeks m matters of this kind was in- 
fallible. We may rely upon it that we shall not improve 
upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of 
poetry ; that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and 
so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be adhered 
to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two 
categories a poem belongs ; whether this or that poem is 
to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. 
But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a 
predominant note, which determines the poem as belong- 
ing to one of these kinds rather than the other ; and here 
is the best proof of the value of the classification, and of 



WORDSWORTH. 35I 

the advantage of adhering to it. '(Wordsworth's poems 
will never produce their due effect until they are freed 
from their present artificial arrangement, and grouped 
more naturally? ; 

Disengaged from the quantity of inferior work which 
now obscures them, the best poems of Wordsworth, I hear 
many people say, would indeed stand out in great beauty, 
but they Avould prove to be very few in number, scarcely 
more than a half a dozen. I maintain, on the other hand, 
that what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in 
my opinion Wordsworth's superiority, is the great and 
ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even 
after all his inferior work has been cleared away. He 
gives us so much to rest upon, so much which communi- 
cates his spirit and engages ours ! 

This is of very great importance. If it were a com- 
parison of single pieces, or of three or fotir pieces, by each 
poet, I do not say that Wordsworth would stand decisively 
above Gray, or Burns, or Coleridge, or Keats, or Manzoni, 
or Heine. It is in his ampler body of powerful work that 
I find his superiority. His good work itself, his work 
which counts, is not all of it, of course, of equal value. 
Some kinds of poetry are in themselves lower kinds than 
others. The ballad kind is a lower kind ; the didactic 
kind, still more, is a lower kind. Poetry of this latter 
sort counts, too, sometimes, by its biographical interest 
partly, not by its poetical interest pure and simple ; but 
then this can only be when the poet producing it has the 
power and importance of Wordsworth, a power and im- 
portance which he assuredl}? did not establish by such 
didactic poetry alone. Altogether, it is, I say, by the 
great body of powerful and significant work which remains 
to him, after every reduction and deduction has been 
made, that W^ordsworth's superiority is proved. 

To exhibit this body of Wordsworth's best work, to 
clear away obstructions from around it, and to let it speak 
for itself, is what every lover of Wordsworth should desire. 
Until this has been done, Wordsworth, whom we, to whom 
he is dear, all of us know and feel to be so great a 



352 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

poet, has not had a fair chance before the world. When 
once it has been done, he will make his way best, not by 
our advocacy of him, but by his own worth and power. 
We may safely leave him to make his way thus, we who 
believe that a superior worth and power in poetry finds in 
mankind a sense responsive to it and disposed at last to 
recognize it. Yet at the outset, before he has been duly 
known and recognized, we may do Wordsworth a service, 
perhaps, by indicating in what his superior power and 
worth will be found to consist, and in what it will not. 
; Jjong ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble 
and profound application of ideas to life is the most 
essential part of poetic greatness. I said that a great poet 
receives his distinctive character of superiority from his 
application, under the conditions immutably fixed by the 
laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his applica- 
tion, I say, to his subject, whatever it may be, of the 
ideas. 

" On man, on nature, and on human life," 

which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is 
Wordsworth's own ; and his superiority arises from his 
powerful use, in his best pieces, his powerful application 
to his subject, of ideas '' on man, on nature, and on 
human life." „; 

Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly remarked 
that ^' no nation has treated in poetry moral ideas with 
more energy and depth than the English nation." And 
he adds : '^ There, it seems to me, is the great merit of 
the English poets." Voltaire does not mean, by '^ treating 
in poetry moral ideas," the composing moral and didactic 
poems ; — that brings us but a very little way in poetry. 
He means just the same thing as was meant when I s23oke 
above ^^ of the noble and profound application of ideas to 
life " ; and he means the application of these ideas under 
the conditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty 
and poetic truth, fii it is said that to call these ideas mor^/ 
ideas is to introduce a strong and injurious limitation, I an- 
swer that it is to do nothing of the kind, because moral ideas 



WORDSWORTH. 353 

are really so main a part of hnman life. The question, 
lioiv to live, is itself a moral idea ; and it is the question 
which most interests every man, and with which, in some 
way or other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is 
of course to be given to the term moral. Whatever bears 
upon the question, ^^how to live,^' comes under it. 

" Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but, what thou liv'st, 
Live well ; how long or short, permit to heaven." 

In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once per- 
ceives, a moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats con- 
soles the forward-bending lover on the Grecian Urn, the 
lover arrested and presented in immortal relief by the 
sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with the line, 

" Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair — " 

he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that 

" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep," 

he utters a moral idea. 

Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and 
profound treatment of moral ideas, in this large sense, is 
what distinguishes the English poetry. He sincerely 
meant praise, not dispraise or hint of limitation ; and 
they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary 
consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire 
states it. xtf what distinguishes the greatest poets is their 
powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which 
surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the term 
ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, 
because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree 
moral.^ 

<.It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this : that 

poetry is at bottom a criticism of life ; that the greatness 

of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of 

ideas to life, — to the question : How to live.y Morals are 

23 



354 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

often treated in a narrow and false fashion ; they are 
bound up with systems of thought and belief which have 
had their day ; they are fallen into the hands of pedants 
and professional dealers ; they grow tiresome to some of 
us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of 
revolt against them ; in a poetry which might take for its 
motto Omar Kheyam's words : ^^ Let us make up in the 
tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." 
Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them ; in 
a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but 
where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude our- 
selves in either case ; and the best cure for our delusion is 
to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible 
word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A 
poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt 
against life ; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas 
is a poetry of indifference towards life. 

Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of 
the senses, or literary form and finish, or argumentative 
ingenuity, in comparison with *^the best and master 
thing " for us, as he called it, the concern, how to live. 
Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked 
and undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they 
were unthankful or cowardly. But the things might also 
be over-prized, and treated as final when they are not. 
They bear to life the relation which inns bear to home. 
^^ As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on 
the road, and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn ! 
Man, thou hast forgotten thine object ; thy journey was 
ziot to ihi^, hut through this. * But this inn is taking.' 
And how many other inns, too, are taking, and how many 
fields and meadows ! but as places of passage merely. 
You have an object, which is this : to get home, to do 
your duty to your family, friends, and fellow-countrymen, 
to attain inward freedom, serenity, hapjiiness, contentment. 
Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your fancy, and you 
forget your home and want to make your abode with them 
and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking. 
Who denies that they are taking ? but as places, of pas- 



WORDSWORTH. 355 

sage, as inns. And when I say this, you suppose me to be 
attacking the care for style, the care for argument. I am 
not ; I attack the resting in them, the not looking to the 
end which is beyond them." 

Now, when we come across a poet like Theophile Gau- 
tier, we have a poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, 
and never got farther. There may be inducements to 
this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to find de- 
light in him, to cleave to him ; but after all, we do not 
change the truth about him, — we only stay ourselves in 
his inn along with him. And when we come across a 
poet like Wordsworth, who sings 

" Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope, 
And melancholy fear subdued by faith, 
Of blessed consolations in distress. 
Of moral strength and intellectual power, 
Of joy in widest commonalty spread " — 

then we have a poet intent on '' the best and master 
thing," and who prosecutes his Journey home, v We say, 
for brevity's sake, that he deals with life, because he deals 
with that in which life really consists.' This is what 
Voltaire means to praise in the English poets, — this deal- 
ing with what is really life. But always it is the mark of 
the greatest poets that they deal with it ; and to say that 
the English poets are remarkable for dealing with it, is 
only another way of saying, what is true, that in poetry 
the English genius has especially shown its power. 

/Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in his 
dealing with it so powerfully. I have named a num- 
ber of celebrated poets above all of whom he, in my 
opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed above 
poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, Schiller, 
because these famous personages, with a thousand gifts 
and merits, never, or scarcely ever, attain the distinctive 
accent and utterance of the high and genuine poets — 

" Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti," 

at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in 



356 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

our list, have this accent ; — who can doubt it ? And at 
the same time they have treasures of humor, felicity, 
passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in vain. 
Where, then, is Words worth^s superiority ? It is here ; 
he deals with more of life than they do ; he deals with 
life, as a whole, more powerfully. 

No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fervent 
Wordsworthian will add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen does, that 
Wordsworth's poetry is precious because his philosophy is 
sound ; that his ^^ ethical system is as distinctive and cap- 
able of exposition as Bishop Butler's ; " that his poetry is 
informed by ideas which *^ fall spontaneously into a scien- 
tific system of thought." But we must be on our guard 
against the Words worthians, if we want to secure for 
Wordsworth his due rank as a poet. The Words worthians 
are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and to lay far 
too much stress upon what they call his philosophy. His 
poetry is the reality, his philosophy, — so far, at least, as it 
may put on the form and habit of '^ a scientific system of 
thought," and the more that it puts them on, — is the il- 
lusion. Perhaps we shall one day learn to make this 
proposition general, and to say : Poetry is the reality, phi- 
losophy the illusion. sBut in Wordsworth's case, at any 
rate, we cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal 
philosophy. 

The Excursion abounds with philosophy, and therefore 
the Excursion is to the Wordsworthian what it never can 
be to the disinterested lover of poetry, — a satisfactory 
work. '^ Duty exists," says Wordsworth, in the Excur- 
sion ; and then he proceeds thus — 

"... Immutably survive, 
For our support, the measures and the forms, 
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies, 
Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not." 

And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that 
here is a sweet union of philosophy and poetry. But the 
disinterested lover of poetry will feel that the lines carry 
us really not a step farther thau the proposition which 



WORDSWORTH. 357 

they would interpret ; that they are a tissue of elevated 
but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry. 

Or let us come direct to the center of Wordsworth's 
philosophy, as '' an ethical system, as distinctive and ca- 
pable of systematical exposition as Bishop Butler^s " — 

"... One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only ; — an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good." 

That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, relig- 
ious and philosophic doctrine ; and the attached Words- 
worthian loves passages of such doctrine, and brings them 
forward in proof of his poet's excellence. But however 
true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, none 
of the characters oi poetic truth, the kind of truth which 
we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really 
strong. 

Even the ^* intimation " of the famous Ode, those corner- 
stones of the supposed philosophic system of Words- 
worth, — the idea of the high instincts and affections com- 
ing out in childhood, testifying of a divine home recently 
left, and fading away as our life proceeds, — this idea, of 
undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself not the 
character of poetic truth of the best kind ; it has no real 
solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her 
beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Words- 
worth himself as a child. But to say that universally this 
instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away 
afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful. In many 
people, perhaps with the majority of educated persons, 
the love of nature is nearly imperceptible at ten years old, 
but strong and operative at thirty. In general we may 
say of these high instincts of early childhood, the base of 
the alleged systematic philosophy of Wordsworth, what 
Thucydides says of the early achievements of the Greek 



358 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

race : '' It is impossible to speak with certainty of what is 
so remote ; but from all that we can really investigate, I 
should say that they were no very great things." 

Finally, the "'^scientific system of thought '^ in Words- 
worth gives us at least such poetry as this, which the 
devout Words worthian accepts — 

O for the coming of that glorious time 

When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 

And best protection, this Imperial Realm, 

While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 

An obligation, on her part, to teach 

Them who are born to serve her and obey ; 

Binding herself by statute to secure, 

For all the children whom her soil maintains, 

The rudiments of letters, and inform 

The mind with moral and religious truth." 

Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production 
of these un- Voltairian lines must have been imposed on 
him as a judgment ! One can hear them being quoted at 
a Social Science Congress ; one can call up the whole 
scene. A great room in one of our dismal provincial 
towns ; dusty air and jaded afternoon daylight ; benches 
full of men with bald heads and women in spectacles ; 
an orator lifting up his face from a manuscript written 
within and without to declaim these lines of Words- 
worth ; and in the soul of any poor child of nature who 
may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of 
lamentation, and mourning, and woe ! 

'* But turn we," as Wordsworth says, '^ from these bold, 
bad men," the haunters of Social Science Congresses. And 
let us be on our guard, too, against the exhibitors and ex- 
tollers of a '^ scientific system of thought " in Wordsworth's 
poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they 
thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and 
may be told quite simply. \Wordsworth's poetry is great 
because of the extraordinary power with which Words- 
worth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered 
to us in the simple primary affections and duties ; and 
because of the extraordinary power with which, in case 



WORDSWORTH, 359 

after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to 
make us share it. 

The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest 
and most unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is 
also accessible universally. Wordsworth brings us word, 
therefore, according to his own strong and characteristic 
line, he brings us word 

" Of joy in widest commonalty spread." 

Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Wordsworth 
tells of what all seek, and tells of it at its truest and best 
source, and yet a source where all may go and draw for it. ) 
Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is 
precious which Wordsworth, standing even at this peren- 
nial and beautiful source, may give us. Wordsworthians 
are apt to talk as if it must be. They will speak with the 
same reverence of Tlie Sailor's Mother, for example, as of 
Lucy Gray. They do their master harm by such lack of 
discrimination. Lucy Gray is a beautiful success ; The 
Sailor's Mother is a failure. To give aright what he 
wishes to give, to interpret and render successfully, is not 
always within Wordsworth's own command. It is within 
no poet's command ; here is the part of the Muse, the in- 
spiration, the God, the '' not ourselves." In Wordsworth's 
case, the accident, for so it may almost l)e called, of in- 
spiration, is of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is 
so evidently filled with a new and sacred energy when the 
inspiration is upon him ; no poet, when it fails him, is so 
left '^ weak as is a breaking wave."^ I remember hearing 
him say that " Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough." 
The remark is striking and true ; no line in Goethe, as 
Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came 
there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe's poetry is not in- 
evitable : not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's 
poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as 
Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave 
him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. 
He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not 



3(JU ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine Mil- 
tonic lines ; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, 
like Milton. When he seeks to have a style he falls into 
ponderosity and pomposity. In the Excursion we have 
his style, as an artistic product of his own creation ; and 
although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize Words- 
worth's real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of 
the Excursion, as a work of poetic style : '^ This will never 
do." And yet magical as is that powder, which Words- 
worth has not, of assured and possessed poetic style, he 
has something which is an equivalent for it. 

Every one who has any sense for these things feels the 
subtle turn, the heightening, which is given to a poet's 
verse by his genius for style. We can feel it in the 

" After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well '* — 

of Shakespeare ; in the 

"... though fall'n oil evil days, 
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues '' — 

of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's 
power of poetic style which gives such worth to Paradise 
Regai7ied, and makes a great poem of a work in which 
Milton's imagination does not soar high. Wordsworth 
has in constant possession, and at command, no style 
of this kind ; but he had too poetic a nature, and had 
read the great poets too well, not to catch, as I have 
already remarked, something of it occasionally. We find 
it not only in his Miltonic lines ; we find it in such a 
phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's — 

* ' the fierce confederate storm 
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
Within the walls of cities ; " 

although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is 
undeniable, is more properly that of eloquent prose than 
the subtle heightening and change wrought by genuine 
poetic style. It is style, again, and the elevation given 
by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of Laoda- 
meia. Still the right sort of verse to choose from Words- 



WORDSWORTH. 361 

worth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic 
form of expression, is a line like this from Michael — 

*' And never lifted up a single stone." 

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of 
poetic style, strictly so called, at all ; yet it is expression 
of the highest and most truly expressive kind. 

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of per- 
fect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and 
force of that which with entire fidelity it utters, Burns 
could show him. 

" The poor inhabitant below 
Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow 

And softer flame ; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low 
And stain'd his name." 

Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Words- 
worth ; and if Wordsworth did great things with this 
nobly plain manner, we must remember, what indeed he 
himself would always have been forward to acknowledge, 
that Burns used it before him. 

Still Wordsworth's use of it has something unique and 
unmatchable. ^ Nature herself seems, I say, to take the 
pen out of his nand, and to write for him with her own 
bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two 
causes ; from the profound sincereness with which Words- 
worth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sin- 
cere and natural character of his subject itself. He can 
and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most 
plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness. His expres- 
sion may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem 
of Resolution and Independence ; but it is bald as the bare 
mountain -tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of 
grandeur. 

iyWherever we meet with the successful balance, in Words- 
worth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth 
of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those 



362 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a 
warm admiration for Laodameia and for the great Ode ; 
but if I am to tell the very truth, I find Laodameia not 
wholly free from something artificial, and the great Ode 
not wholly free from something dechimatory. If I had to 
pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Words- 
worth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such 
as Micliael, The Fountain, The Highland Reai^er. And 
poems with the peculiar and unique beauty which distin- 
guishes these, Wordsworth produced in considerable 
number ; besides very many other poems of which the 
worth, although jiot so rare as the worth of these, is still 
exceedingly high. / 

On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only 
is Wordsworth eminent by reason of the goodness of his 
best work, but he is eminent also by reason of the great 
body of good work which he has left to us. With the an- 
cients I will not compare him. In many respects the an- 
cients are far above us, and yet there is something that we 
demand which they can never give. Leaving the ancients, 
let us come to the poets and poetry of Christendom. 
Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, Goethe, are alto- 
gether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical 
heaven than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, 
among the moderns, we are to find his superiors. 

To disengage the poems which . show his power, and to 
present them to the English-speaking public and to the 
world, is the object of this volume. I by no means say 
that it contains all which in Wordsworth's poems is inter- 
esting. Except in the case of Margaret, a story composed 
separately from the rest of the Excursion, and which be- 
longs to a different part of England, I have not ventured 
on detaching portions of poems, or on giving any piece 
otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave it. But under 
the conditions imposed by this reserve, the volume con- 
tains, I think, everything, or nearly everything, which 
may best serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, 
nothing which may disserve him. 

I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians ; and if we are 



WORDSWORTH. 363 

to get Wordsworth recognized by the public and by the 
world, we must recommend him not in the spirit of a 
clique, but in the spirit of disinterested lovers of poetry. 
But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I can read with 
pleasure and edification Peter Bell, and the whole series 
of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and the address to Mr. Wilkin- 
son's spade, and even the Thanksgiving Ode ; — everything 
of Wordsworth, I think, except Vandracoiir and Julia. 
It is not for nothing that one has been brought up in the 
veneration of a man so truly worthy of homage ; that one 
has seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, 
and been familiar with his country. No Wordsworthian 
has a tenderer affection for this pure and sage master than 
I, or is less really oJffended by his defects. But Words- 
worth is something more than the pure and sage master of 
a small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to 
rest satisfied until he is seen to be what he is. He is one 
of the very chief glories of English Poetry ; and by 
nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us 
lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him rec- 
ognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, 
as widely as possible and as truly as possible, his own word 
concerning his poems : * They will co-operate with the be- 
nign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in 
their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, 
and happier/ , 

• 



XVI. 
BYRON.* 

When- at last I held in my hand the volume of poems 
which I had chosen from Wordsworth, and began to turn 
over its pages, there arose in me almost immediately the 
desire to see beside it, as a companion volume, a like col- 
lection of the best poetry of Byron. Alone amongst our 
poets of the earlier part of this century, Byron and Words- 
worth not only furnish material enough for a volume of 
this kind, but also, as it seems to me, they both of them 
gain considerably by being thus exhibited. There are 
poems of Coleridge and of Keats equal, if not superior, to 
anything of Byron or Wordsworth ; but a dozen pages or 
two will contain them, and the remaining poetry is of a 
quality much inferior. Scott never, I think, rises as a 
poet to the level of Byron and Wordsworth at all. On the 
other hand, he never falls below his own usual level very 
far ; and by a volume of selections from him, therefore, 
his effectiveness is not increased. As to Shelley there 
will be more question ; and indeed Mr. Stopford Brooke, 
whose accomplishments, eloquence, and love of poetry we 
must all recognize and admire, has actually given us Shel- 
ley in such a volume. But for my own part I cannot 
think that Shelley's poetry, except by snatches and frag- 
ments, has the value of the good work of Wordsworth and 
Byron ; or that it is possible for even Mr. Stopford Brooke 
to make up a volume of selections from him which, for 
real substance, power, and worth, can at all take rank with 
a like volume from Byron or Wordsworth. 

Shelley knew quite well the difference between the 

1 Preface to Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew 
Arnold, 1881. 
364 



BYRON. 365 

achievement of such a poet as Byron and his own. He 
praises Byron too unreservedly, but he sincerely felt, and 
he was right in feeling, that Byron was a greater poetical 
power than himself. As a man, Shelley is at a number of 
points immeasurably Byron's superior ; he is a beautiful 
and enchanting spirit, whose vision, when we call it up, 
has far more loveliness, more charm for our soul, than 
the vision of Byron. But all the personal charm of Shel- 
ley cannot hinder us from at last discovering in his poetry 
the incurable want, in general, of a sound subject-matter, 
and the incurable fault, in consequence, of unsubstan- 
tiality. Those who extol him as the poet of clouds, the 
poet of sunsets, are only saying that he did not, in fact, 
lay hold upon the poet's right subject-matter ; and in 
honest truth, with all his charm of soul and spirit, and 
with all his gift of musical diction and movement, he 
never, or hardly ever, did. Except, as I have said, for a 
few short things and single stanzas, his original poetry is 
less satisfactory than his translations, for in these the 
subject-matter was found for him. Nay, I doubt whether 
his delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far 
more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and 
tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than 
his poetry. 

There remain to be considered Byron and Wordsworth. 
That Wordsworth affords good material for a volume of 
selections, and that he gains by having his poetry thus pre- 
sented, is an old belief of mine which led me lately to make 
up a volume of poems chosen out of Wordsworth, and to 
bring it before the public. By its kind reception of the 
volume, the public seems to show itself a partaker in my be- 
lief. Now Byron also supplies plenty of material for a like 
volume, and he too gains, 1 think, by being so presented. 
Mr. Swinburne urges, indeed, that " Byron, who rarely 
wrote anything either worthless or faultless, can only be 
judged or appreciated in the mass ; the greatest of his works 
was his whole work taken together." It is quite true that 
Byron rarely wrote anything either worthless or faultless ; 
it is quite true also that in the appreciation of Byron's 



366 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

power a sense of the amount and variety of his work, 
defective though much of his work is, enters justly into 
our estimate. But although there may be little in Byron's 
poetry which can be pronounced either worthless or fault- 
less, there are portions of it which are far higher in worth 
and far more free from fault than others. And although, 
again, the abundance and variety of his production is un- 
doubtedly a proof of his power, yet I question whether 
by reading everything which he gives us we are so likely 
to acquire an admiring sense even of his variety and abun- 
dance, as by reading what he gives us at his happier 
moments. Varied and abundant he amply proves himself 
even by this taken alone. Eeceive him absolutely without 
omission or compression, follow his whole out-pouring 
stanza by stanza and line by line from the very commence- 
ment to the very end, and he is capable of being tire- 
some. 

Byron has told us himself that the Giaou7' ''is but a 
string of passages. '' He has made full confession of his 
own negligence. '^ No one," says he, '^^has done more 
through negligence to corrupt the language." This ac- 
cusation brought by himself against his poems is not just ; 
but when he goes on to say of them, that " their faults, 
whatever they may be, are those of negligence and not of 
labor," he says what is perfectly true. " Lara,'' he de- 
clares, '' I wrote while undressing after coming home from 
balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry, 1814. The 
Bride was written in four, the Corsair in ten days." He 
calls this " ei humiliating confession, as it proves my own 
want of judgment in publishing, and the public's in read- 
ing, things which cannot have stamina for permanence." 
Again he does his poems injustice ; the producer of such 
poems could not but publish them, the public could not 
but read them. Nor could Byron have produced his work 
in any other fashion ; his poetic work could not have 
first grown and matured in his own mind, and then come 
forth as an organic whole ; Byron had not enough of the 
artist in him for this, nor enough of self-command. 
He wrote, as he truly tells us, to relieve himself, and he 



BYRON. 367 

went on writing because he found the relief become indis- 
pensable. But it was inevitable that works so produced 
should be, in general, ^' a, string of passages," poured out, 
as he describes them, with rapidity and excitement, and 
with new passages constantly suggesting themselves, and 
added while his work was going through the press. It is 
evident that we have here neither deliberate scientific con- 
struction, nor yet the instinctive artistic creation of poetic 
wholes ; and that to take passages from work produced as 
Byron^s was is a very different thing from taking passages 
out of the y^dipus or the Tefnjjest, and deprives the poetry 
far less of its advantage. 

Nay, it gives advantage to the poetry, instead of de- 
priving it of any. Byron, I said, has not a great artist's 
profound and patient skill in combining an action or in 
developing a character, — a skill which we must watch and 
follow if we are to do justice to it. But he has a wonder- 
ful power of vividly conceiving a single incident, a single 
situation ; of throwing himself upon it, grasping it as if it 
were real and he saw and felt it, and of making us see 
and feel it too. The Giaour is, as he truly called it, " a 
string of passages," not a work moving by a deep internal 
law of development to a necessary end ; and our total im- 
pression from it cannot but receive from this, its inherent 
defect, a certain dimness and indistinctness. But the in- 
cidents of the journey and death of Hassan, in that poem, 
are conceived and presented with a vividness not to be 
surpassed ; and our im23ression from them is correspond- 
ingly clear and powerful. In Lara, again, there is no ad- 
equate development either of the character of the chief 
personage or of the action of the poem ; our total impres- 
sion from the work is a confused one. Yet such an inci- 
dent as the disposal of the slain Ezzelin's body passes be- 
fore our eyes as if we actually saw it. And in the same 
way as these bursts of incident, bursts of sentiment also, 
living and vigorous, often occur in the midst of poems 
which must be admitted to be but weakly-conceived and 
loosely-combined wholes. Byron cannot but be a gainer 
by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid^ 



36S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

powerful, effective in his work, and withdrawn from what 
is not so. 

Byron, I say, cannot but be a gainer by this, just as 
Wordsworth is a gainer by a like proceeding. I esteem 
Wordsworth's poetry so highly, and the world, in my opin- 
ion, has done it such scant justice, that I could not rest 
satisfied until I had fulfilled, on Wordsworth's behalf, a 
long-clierished desire ; — had disengaged, to the best of my 
power, his good work from the inferior work joined with 
it, and had placed before the public the body of his good 
work by itself. To the poetry of Byron the world has 
ardently paid homage ; full justice from his contempo- 
raries, perhaps even more than justice, his torrent of 
poetry received. His poetry was admired, adored, ^'^ with 
all its imperfections on its head," — in spite of negligence, 
in spite of diffuseness, in spite of repetitions, in spite of 
whatever faults it possessed. His name is still great and 
brilliant. Nevertheless the hour of irresistible vogue has 
passed away for him ; even for Byron it could not but pass 
away. The time lias come for him, as it comes for all 
poets, when he must take his real and permanent place, no 
longer depending upon the vogue of his own day and upon 
the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. Whatever we may 
think of him, we shall not be subjugated by him as they 
were ; for, as he cannot be for us what he was for them, 
we cannot admire him so hotly and indiscriminately as 
they. His faults of negligence, of diffuseness, of repeti- 
tion, his faults of whatever kind, we shall abundantly feel 
and unsparingly criticise ; the mere interval of time be- 
tween us and him makes disillusion of this kind inevitable. 
But how then will Byron stand, if we relieve him too, so 
far as we can, of the encumbrance of his inferior and weak- 
est work, and if we bring before us his best and strongest 
work in one body together ? That is the question which 
I, who can even remember the latter years of Byron's 
vogue, and have myself felt the expiring wave of that 
mighty influence, but who certainly also regard him, and 
have long regarded him, without illusion, cannot but ask 
myself, cannot but seek to answer. The present volume 



BYRON. 369 

is an attempt to provide adequate data for answering 
it. 

Byron has been over-praised, no doubt. ^' Byron is one 
of our French superstitions," says M. Edmond Scherer ; 
but where has Byron not been a superstition ? He pays 
now the jDenalty of this exaggerated worship. " Alone 
among the English poets his contemporaries, Byron," said 
M. Taine, ^' atteint a la cime, — gets to the top of the 
poetic mountain." But the idol that M. Taine had thus 
adored M. Scherer is almost for burning. ^'In Byron," 
he declares, ^Hhere is a remarkable inability ever to lift 
himself into the region of real poetic art, — art impersonal 
and disinterested, — at all. He has fecundity, eloquence, 
wit, bat even these qualities themselves are confined with- 
in somewhat narrow limits. He has treated hardly any 
subject but one, — himself ; now the man, in Byron, is of 
a nature even less sincere than the poet. This beautiful 
and blighted being is at bottom a coxcomb. He posed all 
his life long." 

Our poet could not well meet with more severe and un- 
sympathetic criticism. However, the praise often given 
to Byron has been so exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, 
a reaction in which he is unduly disparaged. ^' As various 
in composition as Shakespeare himself. Lord Byron has 
embraced," says Sir Walter Scott, ''every topic of human 
life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its 
slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones." 
It is not surprising that some one with a cool head should 
retaliate, on such provocation as this, by saying: ''He 
has treated hardly any subject but one, himself. ^^ "In 
the very grand and tremendous drama of Cain,^^ says 
Scott, " Lord Byron has certainly matched Milton on his 
own ground." And Lord Byron has done all this, Scott 
adds " while managing his pen with the careless and neg- 
ligent ease of a man of quality." Alas, "managing his 
pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of qual- 
ity," Byron wrote in his Cain — 

" Souls that dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in 
His everlasting face, and tell him that 
His evil is not good ; " 



370 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

or he wrote — 

'*. . . And thou would'st go on aspiring 
To the great double Mysteries ! the two Principles!"^ 

One has only to repeat to oneself a line from Paradise 
Lost in order to feel the difference. 

Sainte-Beuve, speaking of that exquisite master of lan- 
guage, the Italian poet Leopardi, remarks how often we 
see the alliance, singular though it may at first sight ap- 
pear, of the poetical genius with the genius for scholar- 
ship and philology. Dante and Milton are instances which 
will occur to every one's mind. Byron is so negligent in 
his poetical style, he is often, to say the truth, so slovenly, 
slipshod, and infelicitous, he is so little haunted by the 
true artist's fine passion for the correct use and consumma- 
mate management of words, that he may be described as 
having for this artistic gift the insensibility of the barbar- 
ian ; — which is perhaps only another and a less flattering 
way of saying, with Scott, that he " manages his pen with 
the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality." Just 
of a piece with the rhythm of 



'' Dare you await the event of a few minutes' 
Deliberation ? " 

or of 

" All shall be void — 
Destroy'd ! " 

is the diction of 

' Which now is painful to these eyes, 
Which had not seen the sun to rise ; 

or of 

". . . there let him lay ! " 

or of the famous passage beginning 

** He who hath bent him o'er the dead ; " 

with those trailing relatives, that crying grammatical 
solecism, that inextricable anacolouthon ! To class the 

^The italics are in the original. 



i 



BYRON. 37X 

work of the author of such things with the work of the 
authors of such verse as 

/' In the dark backward and abysm of time " — 
or as 

"Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, 
Or the tale of Troy divine " — 

is ridiculous. Shakespeare and Milton, with their secret of 
consummate felicity in diction and movement, are of an- 
other and an altogether higher order from Byron, nay, for 
that matter, from Wordsworth also ; from the author of 
such verse as 

" Sol hath dropt into his harbour "- 

or (if Mr. Ruskin pleases) as 

" Parching summer hath no warrant '* 

as from the author of 

" All shall be void — 
Destroy'd ! " 

"With a poetical gift and a poetical performance of the very 
highest order, the slovenliness and tunelessness of much of 
Byron's production, the pompousness and ponderoasness 
of much of Wordsworth's are incompatible. Let us ad- 
mit this to the full. 

Moreover, while we are hearkening to M. Scherer, and 
going along with him in his faultfinding, let us admit, 
too, that the man in Byron is in many respects as unsatis- 
factory as the poet. And, putting aside all direct moral 
criticism of him, — with which we need not concern our- 
selves here, — we shall find that he is unsatisfactory in the 
same way. Some of Byron's most crying faults as a man, 
— his vulgarity, his affectation, — are really akin to the 
faults of commonness, of want of art, in his workmanship 
as a poet. The ideal nature for the poet and artist is that 
of the finely touched and finely gifted man, the eu<pu7j<; of 
the Greeks ; now, Byron's nature was in substance not 



372 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

that of the eb(por]^ at all, but rather, as I have said, of the 
barbarian. The want of fine perception which made it 
possible for him to formulate either the comparison be- 
tween himself and Eousseau, or his reason for getting Lord 
Delawarr excused from a *' licking" at Harrow, is exactly 
what made possible for him also his terrible dealings in, 
A71 ye wool ; I have redde thee ; Buiiburn me ; Oons, and 
it is excellent well. It is exactly, again, what made pos- 
sible for him his precious dictum that Pope is a Gr^ek 
temple, and a string of other criticisms of the like force ; 
it is exactly, in fine, what deteriorated the quality of his 
poetic production. If we think of a good representative 
of that finely touched and exquisitely gifted nature which 
is the ideal nature for the poet and artist, — if we think of 
Eaphael, for instance, who truly is sb(poT]<$ just as Byron is 
not, — we shall bring into clearer light the connection in 
Byron between the faults of the man and the faults of the 
poet. With Raphael's character Byron's sins of vulgarity 
and false criticism would have been impossible, just as with 
Raphael's art Byron's sins of common and bad workman- 
ship. 

Yes, all this is true, but it is not the whole truth about 
Byron nevertheless ; very far from it. The severe criti- 
cism of M. Scherer by no means gives us the whole truth 
about Byron, and we have not yet got it in what has been 
added to that criticism here. The negative part of the 
true criticism of him we perhaps have ; the positive part, 
by far the more important, we have not. Byron's ad- 
mirers appeal eagerly to foreign testimonies in his favor. 
Some of these testimonies do not much move me ; but one 
testimony there is among them which will always carry, 
with me at any rate, very great weight, — the testimony of 
Goethe. Goethe's sayings about Byron were uttered, it 
must however be remembered, at the height of Byron's 
vogue, when that puissant and splendid personality was 
exercising its full power of attraction. In Goethe's own 
household there was an atmosphere of glowing Byron- 
worship ; his daughter-in-law was a passionate admirer of 
Byrou, nay, she enjoyed and prized his poetry, as did. 



BYRON. 373 

Tieck and so many others in Germany at that time, much 
above the poetry of Goethe himself. Instead of being irri- 
tated and rendered jealous by this, a nature like Goethe's 
was inevitably led by it to heighten, not lower, the note of 
his praise. The Time-Spirit, or Zeit-Geist, he would him- 
self have said, was working just then for Byron. This work- 
ing of the Zeit-Geist in his favor was an advantage added 
to Byron's other advantages, an advantage of which he 
had a right to get the benefit. This is what Goethe would 
have thought and said to himself ; and so he would have 
been led even to heighten somewhat his estimate of Byron, 
and to accentuate the emphasis of praise. Goethe speaking 
of Byron at that moment was not and could not be quite the 
same cool critic as Goethe speaking of Dante, or Moliere, 
or Milton. This, I say, we ought to remember in reading 
Goethe's judgments on Byron and his poetry. Still, if we 
are careful to bear this in mind, and if we quote Goethe's 
praise correctly, — which is not always done by those who 
in this country quote it, — and if we add to it that great and 
due qualification added to it by Goethe himself, — which 
so far as I have seen has never yet been done by his quoters 
in this country at all, — then we shall have a judgment on 
Byron, which comes, I think, very near to the truth, and 
which may well command our adherence. 

In his judicious and interesting Life of Byron, Professor 
Nichol quotes Goethe as saying that Byron ** is undoubtedly 
to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century." 
What Goethe did really say was ^' the greatest tale?it,'' not 
'Hhe greatest genius." The difference is important, be- 
cause, while talent gives the notion of power in a man's 
performance, genius gives rather the notion of felicity and 
perfection in it ; and this divine gift of consummate 
felicity by no means, as we have seen, belongs to Byron 
and to his poetry. Goethe said that Byron ^'must un- 
questionably be regarded as the greatest talent of the 
century." ^ He said of him moreover : '^ The English 
may think of Byron what they please, but it is certain that 

i*'Der ohne Frage als das grosste Talent des Jahrhunderts 
anzusehen ist." 



374 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

they can point to no poet who is his like. He is different 
from all the rest, and in the main greater." Here, again, 
Professor Nichol translates : " They can show no (living) 
poet who is to be compared to him ; " — inserting the word 
living, I suppose, to prevent its being thought that Goethe 
would have ranked Byron, as a poet, above Shakespeare 
and Milton. Bat Goethe did not use, or, I think, mean 
to imply, any limitation such as is added by Professor 
Nichol. Goethe said simply, and he meant to say, ^'710 
poet." Only the words which follow ^ ought not, I think, 
to be rendered, ^^who is to be compared to him," that is 
to say, '^ ^v^lO is his equal as a poet/' They mean rather, 
''who may properly be compared with him," " ivlio is 
Ms parallel." And when Goethe said that Byron was " in 
the main greater " than all the rest of the English poets, 
he was not so much thinking of the strict rank, as poetry, 
of Byron's production ; he was thinking of that wonder- 
ful personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry, 
and which Goethe called '' a personality such, for its em- 
inence, as has never been yet, and such as is not likely to 
come again." He was thinking of that '^ daring, dash, 
and grandiosity," ^ of Byron, which are indeed so splendid ; 
and which were, so Goethe maintained, of a character to 
do good, because '' everything great is formative," and 
what is thus formative does us good. 

The faults which went with this greatness, and which 
impaired Byron's poetical work, Goethe saw very well. 
He saw the constant state of warfare and combat, the 
'^ negative and polemical working," which makes Byron's 
poetry a poetry in which we can so little find rest ; he saw 
the Hang zum Unhegrenzten, the straining after the un- 
limited, which made it impossible for Byron to produce 
poetic wholes such as the Tempest or Lear ; he saw the zu 
viel Empirie, the promiscuous adoption of all the matter 
offered to the poet by life, just as it was offered, w^ithout 
thought or patience for the mysterious transmutation to 

1 " Der ihm zu vergleichen ware." 

2 " Byron's Kiihnheit, Keckheitund Grandiositat, ist das nicht 
allesbildend?— Alles Grosse bildet, sobald wir es gewahr werden." 



BYRON. 375 

be operated on this matter by poetic form. But in a sen- 
tence which I cannot, as I say, remember to have yet seen 
quoted in any Engh'sh criticism of Byron, Goethe lays his 
finger on the cause of all these defects in Byron, and on his 
real source of weakness both as a man and as a poet. 
** The moment he reflects, he is a child," says Goethe ; — 
^' sol) aid er reflectirt ist er eiii Ki?id." 

Now if we take the two parts of Goethe's criticism of 
Byron, the favorable and the unfavorable, and put them 
together, we shall have, I think, the truth. On the one 
hand, a splendid and puissant personality - a personality 
'^ in eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely 
to come again " ; of which the like, therefore, is not to be 
found among the poets of our nation, by which Byron '' is 
different from all the rest, and in the main greater." Byron 
is, moreover, ^Hhe greatest talent of our century." On 
the other hand, this splendid personality and unmatched 
talent, this unique Byron, ^' is quite too much in the dark 
about himself ; " * nay, '^ the moment he begins to reflect, 
he is a child." There we have, I think, Byron complete ; 
and in estimating him and ranking him we have to strike 
a balance between the gain which accrues to his poetry, as 
compared with the productions of other poets, from his 
superiority, and the loss which accrues to it from his 
defects. 

A balance of this kind has to be struck in the case of all 
poets except the few supreme masters in whom a profound 
criticism of life exhibits itself in indissoluble connection 
with the laws of poetic truth and beauty. I have seen it 
said that I allege poetry to have for its characteristic this : 
that it is a criticism of life ; and that I make it to be there- 
by distinguished from prose, which is something else. So 
far from it, that when I first used this ex^^ressson, a criti- 
cism of life, now many years ago, it was to literature in 
general that I applied it, and not to poetry in especial. 
''The end and aim of all literature," I said, ''is, if one 
considers it attentively, nothing but that : a criticism of 
life.^' And so it surely is ; the main end and aim of all 
1 " Gar zu dunkel iiber sich selbst." 



376 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

our utterance, wlietlier in prose or in verse, is surely a 
criticism of life. We are not brought much on our way, 
I admit, towards an adequate definition of poetry as dis- 
tinguished from prose by that truth ; still a truth it is, 
and poetry can never prosper if it is forgotten. In poetry, 
however, the criticism of life has to be made conformably 
to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and 
seriousness of substance and matter, felicity and perfection 
of diction and manner, as these are exhibited in the best 
poets, are what constitute a criticism of life made in con- 
formity with the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty ; and 
it is by knowing and feeling the work of those poets, that 
we learn to recognize the fulfilment and non-fulfilment of 
such conditions. 

The moment, however, that we leave the small band of 
the very best poets, the true classics, and deal with poets 
of the next rank, we shall find that perfect truth and 
seriousness of matter, in close alliance with perfect truth 
and felicity of manner, is the rule no longer. We have 
now to take what we can get, to forego something here, 
to admit compensation for it there ; to strike a balance, 
and to see how our poets stand in respect to one another 
when that balance has been struck. Let us observe how 
this is so. 

We will take three poets, among the most considerable 
of our century : Leopardi, Byron, Wordsworth. Giacomo 
Leopardi was ten years younger than Byron, and he died 
thirteen years after him ; both of them, therefore, died 
young — Byron at the age of thirty-six, Leopardi at the 
age of thirty-nine. Both of them Avere of noble birth, 
both of them suffered from physical defect, both of them 
were in revolt against the established facts and beliefs of 
their age ; but here the likeness between them ends. Tlie 
stricken poet of Eecanati had no country, for an Italy in 
his day did not exist ; he had no audience, no celebrity. 
The volume of his poems, published in the very year of 
Byron's death, hardly sold, I suppose, its tens, while the 
volumes of Byron's poetry were selling their tens of thou- 
sands. And yet Leopardi has the very qualities which 



BYRON. 377 

we have found wanting to Byron ; he has the sense for 
form and style, the passion for just expression, the sure 
and firm touch of the true artist. Nay, more, he has a 
grave fulness of knowledge, an insight into the real bear- 
ings of the questions which as a sceptical poet he raises, a 
power of seizing the real point, a lucidity, with which the 
author of Cain has nothing to compare. I can hardly 
imagine Leopardi reading the 

"... And tliou would'st go on aspiring 
To the great double Mysteries ! the two Principles ! " 

or following Byron in his theological controversy with 
Dr. Kennedy, without having his features overspread by 
a calm and fine smile, and remarking of his brilliant con- 
temporary, as Goethe did, that ^' the moment he begins 
to reflect, he is a child." But indeed whoever wishes to 
feel the full superiority of Leopardi over Byron in philo- 
sophic thought, and in the expression of it, has only to 
read one paragraph of one poem, the paragraph of La 
Ginestra, beginning 

" Sovente in queste piagge," 
and ending 

*' Non so se il riso o la pieta prevale." 

In like manner, Leopardi is at many points the poetic 
superior of Wordsworth too. He has a far wider culture 
than Wordsworth, more mental lucidity, more freedom 
from illusions as to the real character of the established 
fact and of reigning conventions ; above all, this Italian, 
with his pure and sure touch, with his fineness of percep- 
tion, is far more of the artist. Such a piece of pompous 
dulness as 

" O for the coming of that glorious time," 

and all the rest of it, or such lumbering verse as Mr. 
Buskin's enemy, 

" Parching summer hath no warrant '' — 



378 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

would have been as impossible to Leopardi as to Dante. 
Where, then, is Wordsworth^s superiority ? for the worth 
of what he has given us in poetry I hold to be greater, on 
the whole, than the worth of what Leopardi has given us. 
It is in Wordsworth's sound and profound sense 

" Of joy in widest commonalty spread ; " 

whereas Leopardi remains with his thoughts ever fixed 
upon the essenza insanabile, upon the acerho, mdegno mis- 
tero delle cose. It is in the power with which Wordsworth 
feels the resources of joy offered to us in nature, offered 
to us in the primary human affections and duties, and in 
the power with which, in his moments of inspiration, he 
renders this joy, and makes us, too, feel it ; a force greater 
than himself seeming to lift him and to prompt his tongue, 
so that he speaks in a style far above any style of which 
he has the constant command, and with a truth far be- 
yond any philosophic truth of which he has the conscious 
and assured possession. Neither Leopardi nor Words- 
worth are of the same order with the great poets who made 
such verse as 

TkfjTov yap Molpat Oufiov Oiffav avdpmTZOiffLV 

or as 

" In la sua volontade e nostra pace ; 

or as 

" . Men must endure 
Their going hence, even as their coming hither ; 
Ripeness is all." 

But as compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at 
many points less lucid, though far less a master of style, 
far less of an artist, gains so much by his criticism of life 
being, in certain matters of profound importance, health- 
ful and true, whereas Leopardi's pessimism is not, that the 
value of Wordsworth's poetry, on the whole, stands higher 
for us than that of Leopardi's, as it stands higher for us, 
I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe's. 



BYRON. 379 

Byron^s poetic value is also greater, on the whole, than 
Leopardi's ; and his superiority turns in the same way 
upon the surpassing worth of something which he had and 
was, after all deduction has been made for his shortcom- 
ings. We talk of Byron's personality, '' a personality in 
eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely to 
come again ; " and we say that by this personality Byron 
is '' different from all the rest of English poets, and in the 
main greater/' But can we not be a little more circum- 
stantial, and name that in which the wonderful power of 
this personality consisted ? We can ; with the instinct of 
a poet Mr. Swinburne has seized upon it and named it 
for us. The power of Byron's personality lies in "the 
splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his 
offences and outweighs all his defects : the excellence of 
sincerity and strength.^^ 

Byron found our nation, after its long and victorious 
struggle with revolutionary France, fixed in a system of 
established facts and dominant ideas which revolted him. 
The mental bondage of the most powerful part of our na- 
tion, of its strong middle-class, to a narrow and false sys- 
tem of this kind, is what we call British Philistinism. 
That bondage is unbroken to this hour, but in Byron's 
time it was even far more deep and dark than it is now. 
Byron was an aristocrat, and it is not difficult for an aris- 
tocrat to look on the prejudices and habits of the British 
Philistine with scepticism and disdain. Plenty of young 
men of his own class Byron met at Almack's or at Lady 
Jersey's, who regarded the established facts and reigning 
beliefs of the England of that day with as little reverence 
as he did. But these men, disbelievers in British Philis- 
tinism in private, entered English public life, the most 
conventional in the world, and at once they saluted with 
respect the habits and ideas of British Philistinism as if 
they were a part of the order of creation, and as if in 
public no sane man would think of warring against them. 
With Byron it was different. What he called the cant of 
the great middle part of the English nation, what we call 
its Philistinism, revolted him ; but the cant of his own class, 



380 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

deferring to this Pliilistinism and profiting by it, while 
they disbelieved in it, revolted him even more. '^ Come 
what may/' are his own words, ^' I will never flatter the 
million's canting in any shape." His class in general, on 
the other hand, shrugged their shoulders at this cant, 
laughed at it, pandered to it, and ruled by it. The false- 
hood, cynicism, insolence, misgovernment, oppression, 
with their consequent unfailing crop of human misery, 
which were produced by this state of things, roused Byron 
to irreconcilable revolt and battle. They made him indig- 
nant, they infuriated him ; they were so strong, so defiant, 
so maleficent, — and yet he felt that they were doomed. 
'^ You have seen every trampler down in turn," he com- 
forts himself with saying, ^^from Buonaparte to the sim- 
plest individuals." The old order, as after 1815 it stood 
victorious, with its ignorance and misery below, its cant, 
selfishness, and cynicism above, was at home and abroad 
equally hateful to him. ^'I have simplified my politics," 
he writes, '^ into an utter detestation of all existing gov- 
ernments." And again : '^ Give me a republic. The 
king-times are fast finishing ; there will be blood shed like 
water and tears like mist, but the peoples will conquer in 
the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it." 

Byron himself gave the preference, he tells us, to politi- 
cians and doers, far above writers and singers. But the 
politics of his own day and of his own class, — even of the 
Liberals of his own class, — were impossible for him. Na- 
ture had not formed him for a Liberal peer, proper to 
move the Address in the House of Lords, to pay compli- 
ments to the energy and self-reliance of British middle- 
class Liberalism, and to adapt his politics to suit it. Un- 
fitted for such politics, he threw himself upon poetry as 
his organ ; and in poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, 
and the Witch of Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant— they 
were the upholders of the old order, George the Third and 
Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and Sou they, 
and they were the canters and tramplers of the great world, 
and they were his enemies and himself. 

Such was Byron's personality, by which ^' he is different 



BYRON. 381 

from all the rest of English poets, and in the main greater." 
But he posed all his life, says M. Scherer. Let us distin- 
guish. There is the Byron who posed, there is the Byron 
with his affectations and silliness, the Byron whose weak- 
ness Lady Blessington, with a woman's acuteness, so ad- 
mirably seized ; ^^ his great defecfc is flippancy and a total 
want of self-possession." But when this theatrical and 
easily criticized personage betook himself to poetry, and 
when he had fairly warmed to his work, then he became 
another man ; then the theatrical personage passed away ; 
then a higher power took possession of him and filled him ; 
then at last came forth into light that true and puissant 
personality, with its direct strokes, its ever-welling force, 
its satire, its energy, and its agony. This is the real 
Byron ; whoever stops at the theatrical preludings does 
not know him. And this real Byron may well be superior 
to the stricken Leopardi, he may well be declared ^' dif- 
ferent from all the rest of English poets, and in the main 
greater," in so far as it is true of him, as M. Taine well 
says, that *'all other souls, in comparison with his, seem 
inert" ; in so far as it is true of him that with superb, 
exhaustless energ}^, he maintained, as Professor Nichol 
well says, '' the struggle that keeps alive, if it does not 
save, the soul ; " in so far, finally, as he deserves (and he 
does deserve) the noble praise of him which I have already 
quoted from Mr. Swinburne ; the praise for ^'the splendid 
and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences 
and outweighs all ' his defects : the excellence of sincerity 
and strength" 

True, as a man, Byron could not manage himself, could 
not guide his ways aright, but was all astray. True, he 
has no light, cannot lead us from the past to the future ; 
'Hhe moment he reflects, he is a child." The way out of 
the false state of things which enraged him he did not see, 
— the slow and laborious way upward ; he had not the pa- 
tience, knowledge, self-discipline, virtue, requisite for see- 
ing it. True, also, as a poet, he has no fine and exact 
sense for word and structure and rhythm ; he has not the 
artist's nature and gifts. Yet a personality of Byron's 



382 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

force counts for so much iu life, and a rhetorician of 
Byron's force counts for so much in literature ! But it 
would be most unjust to label Byron, as M. Scherer is dis- 
posed to label him, as a rhetorician only. Along with his 
astounding power and passion he had a strong and deep 
sense for what is beautiful in nature, and for what is beau- 
tiful in human action and suffering. When he warms to 
his work, when he is inspired, Nature herself seems to take 
the pen from him as she took it from Wordsworth, and to 
write for him as she wrote for Wordsworth, though in a 
different fashion, with her own penetrating simplicity- 
Goethe has well observed of Byron, that when he is at his 
happiest his representation of things is as easy and real as 
if he were improvising. It is so ; and his verse then ex- 
hibits quite another and a higher quality from the rhetor- 
ical quality, — admirable as this also in its own kind of 
merit is, — of such verse as 

*' Minions of splendor shrinking from distress," 

and of so much more verse of Byron's of that stamp. Na- 
ture, I say, takes the pen for him ; and then, assured 
master of a true poetic style though he is not, any more 
than Wordsworth, yet as from AVordsworth at his best 
there will come such verse as 

" Will no one tell me what she sings ? " 

SO from Byron, too, at his best, there will come such verse 
as 

" He heard it, but he heeded not ; his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away." 

Of yerse of this high quality, Byron has much ; of verse 
of a quality lower than this, of a quality rather rhetorical 
than truly poetic, yet still of extraordinary power and 
merit, he has still more. To separate, from the mass of 
poetry which Byron poured forth, all this higher portion, 
so superior to the mass, and still so considerable in quan- 
tity, and to present it in one body by itself, is to do a 



BYRON. 383 

service, I believe, to Byrou^s reputation, and to the poetic 
glory of our country. 

Such a service I have in the present volume attempted 
to perform. To Byron, after all the tributes which have 
been paid to him, here is yet one tribute more — 

" Among thy mightier offerings here are mine ! " 

not a tribute of boundless homage certainly, but sincere ; 
a tribute which consists not in covering the poet with elo- 
quent eulogy of our own, but in letting him, at his best 
and greatest, speak for himself. Surely the critic who 
does most for his author is the critic who gains readers 
for his author himself, not for any lucubrations on his 
author : — gains more readers for him, and enables those 
readers to read him with more admiration. 

And in spite of his prodigious vogue, Byron has never 
yet, perhaps, had the serious admiration which he de- 
serves. Society read him and talked about him, as it reads 
and talks about Endymion to-day ; and with the same sort 
of result. It looked in Byron's glass as it looks in Lord 
Beaconsfield's, and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own 
face there ; and then it goes its way, and straightway for- 
gets what manner of man it saw. Even of his passionate 
admirers, how many never got beyond the theatrical Byron, 
from whom they caught the fashion of deranging their 
hair, or of knotting their neck-handkerchief, or of leaving 
their shirt-collar unbuttoned ; how few profoundly felt his 
vital influence, the influence of his splendid and imper- 
ishable excellence of sincerity and strength ! 

His own aristocratic class, whose cynical make-believe 
drove him to fury ; the great middle-class, on whose im- 
pregnable Philistinism he shattered himself to pieces, — 
how little have either of these felt Byron's vital influence ! 
As the inevitable break-up of the old order comes, as the 
English middle-class slowly awakens from its intellectual 
sleep of two centuries, as our actual present world, to 
which this sleep has condemned us, shows itself more 
clearly, — our world of an aristocracy materialized and null, 
a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude 



884 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

and brutal, — we shall turn our eyes again, and to more 
purpose, upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of a 
forlorn hope, who, ignorant of the future and unconsoled 
by its promises, nevertheless waged against the conver- 
sation of the old impossible world so fiery battle ; waged 
it till he fell, — waged it with such splendid and imperish- 
able excellence of sincerity ajid strength. 

Wordsworth's value is of another kind. Wordsworth 
has an insight into permanent sources of joy and consola- 
tion for mankind which Byron has not ; his poetry gives 
us more which we may rest upon than Byron's, — more 
which we can rest upon now, and which men may rest 
upon always. I place Wordsworth's poetry, therefore, 
above Byron's on the whole, although in some points he 
was greatly Byron's inferior, and although Byron's poetry 
will always, probably, find more readers than Wordsworth, 
and will give pleasure more easily. But these two, Words- 
worth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre- 
eminent in actual performance, a glorious pair, among the 
English poets of this century. Keats had probably, in- 
deed, a more consummate poetic gift than either of them : 
but he died having produced too little and being as yet too 
immature to rival them. I for my part can never even 
think of equalling with them any other of their contem- 
poraries ; — either Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked 
in a mist of opium ; or Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual 
angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. 
Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. When 
the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount 
her poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, 
the first names with her will be these. 



XVII. 
SHELLEY/ 

Nowadays all things appear in print sooner or later ; 
but I have heard from a lady who knew Mrs. Shelley a 
story of her which, so far as I know, has not appeared in 
print hitherto. Mrs. Shelley was choosing a school for her 
son, and asked the advice of this lady, who gave for ad- 
vice — to use her own words to me — " Just the sort of ban- 
ality, you know, one does come out with : Oh, send him 
somewhere where they will teach him to think for him- 
self ! " I have had far too long a training as a school in- 
spector to presume to call an utterance of this kind a danal- 
ity ; however, it is not on this advice that I now wish to 
lay stress, but upon Mrs. Shelley^s reply to it. Mrs. Shelley 
answered : '* Teach him to think for himself ? Oh, my 
God, teach him rather to think like other people ! " 

To the lips of many and many a reader of Professor 
Dowden's volumes a cry of this sort will surely rise, called 
forth by Shelley's life as there delineated. I have read 
those volumes with the deepest interest, but I regret their 
publication, and am surprised, I confess, that Shelley's 
family should have desired or assisted it. For my own 
part, at any rate, I would gladly have been left with the 
impression, the ineffaceable impression, made upon me by 
Mrs. Shelley's first edition of her husband's collected 
poems. Medwin and Hogg and Trelawny had done little 
to change the impression made by those four delightful 
volumes of the original edition of 1839. The text of the 
poems has in some places been mended since ; but Shelley 
is not a classic, whose various readings are to be noted 
with earnest attention. The charm of the poems flowed 

1 Published in The Nineteenth Century, January, 1888. 

25 385 



38G ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

in upon us from that edition and the charm of the char- 
acter. Mrs. Shelley had done her work admirably ; her 
introductions to the poems of each year, with Shelley's pre- 
faces and passages from his letters, supplied the very pic- 
ture of Shelley to be desired. Somewhat idealized by 
tender regret and exalted memory Mrs. Shelley's represen- 
tation no doubt was. But without sharing her conviction 
that Shelley's character, impartially judged, ''^ would stand 
in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary," 
we learned from her to knoAV the soul of affection, of 
*' gentle and cordial goodness," of eagerness and ardor for 
human happiness, which was in this rare spirit, — so mere 
a monster unto many. Mrs. Shelley in her general pre- 
face to her husband's poems : *^ I abstain from any remark 
on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as 
the joassions which they engendered insjoired his poetry ; 
this is not the time to relate the truth." I for my part 
could wish, I repeat, that that time had never come. 

But come it has, and Professor Dowden has given us the 
Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley in two very thick volumes. 
If the work was to be done, Professor Dowden has indeed 
done it thoroughly. One or two things in his biography 
of Shelley I could wish different, even waiving the ques- 
tion whether it was desirable to relate in full the occur- 
rences of Shelley's private life. Professor Dowden holds a 
brief for Shelley ; he pleads for Shelley as an advocate 
pleads for his client, and this strain of pleading, united 
with an attitude of adoration which in Mrs. Shelley had 
its charm, but which Professor Dowden was not bound to 
adopt from her, is unserviceable to Shelley, nay, injurious 
to him, because it inevitably begets, in many readers of 
the story which Professor Dowden has to tell, impatience 
and revolt. Further, let me remark that the biography 
before us is of prodigious length, although its hero died 
before he was thirty years old, and that it might have been 
considerably shortened if it had been more plainly and 
simply written. I see that one of Professor Dowden's 
critics, while praising his style for " a certain poetic quality 
of fervor and picturesqueness," laments that in some im- 



SHELLEY. 3g7 

portant passages Professor Dowdeu '' fritters away great 
opportuuities for sustained and impassioned narrative." I 
am inclined much rather to lament that Prof essor Dowden 
has not steadily kept his poetic quality of fervor and pic- 
turesqueness more under control. Is it that the Home 
Kulers have so loaded the language that even an Irishman 
who is not one of them catches something of their full 
habit of style ? No, it is rather, I believe, that Professor 
Dowden, of poetic nature himself, and dealing with a poetic 
nature like Shelley, is so steeped in sentiment by his sub- 
ject that in almost every page of the biography the senti- 
ment runs over. A curious note of his style, suffused 
with sentiment, is that it seems incapable of using the 
common word child. A great many births are mentioned 
in the biography, but always it is a poetic bale that is born, 
not a prosaic child. And so, again, Andre Chenier is not 
guillotined, but ^' too foully done to death." Again, 
Shelley after his runaway marriage with Harriet West- 
brook was in Edinburgh without money and full of anxieties 
for the future, and complained of his hard lot in being un- 
able to get away, in being '^chained to the filth and com- 
merce of Edinburgh." Natural enough ; but why should 
Professor Dowden improve the occasion as follows ? '^ The 
most romantic of northern cities could lay no spell upon 
his spirit. His eye was not fascinated by the presences of 
mountains and the sea, by the fantastic outlines of aerial 
piles seen amid the wreathing smoke of Auld Reekie, by 
the gloom of the Canongate illuminated with shafts of 
sunlight streaming from its interesting wynds and alleys ; 
nor was his imagination kindled by storied house or palace, 
and the voices of old, forgotten, far-off things, which 
haunt their walls." If Professor Dowden, writing a book 
in prose, could have brought himself to eschew poetic ex- 
cursions of this kind and to tell his story in a plain way, 
lovers of simplicity, of whom there are some still left in the 
world, would have been gratified, and at the same time 
his book would have been the shorter by scores of pages. 

These reserves being made, I have little except praise 
for the manner in which Professor Dowdon has performed 



38S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

his task ; whether it was a task which ought to be per- 
formed at all, probably did not lie with him to decide. 
His ample materials are used with order and judgmxcnt ; 
the history of Shelley's life develops itself clearly before 
our eyes ; the documents of importance for it are given 
with sufficient fulness, nothing essential seems to have 
been kept back, although I would gladly, I confess, have 
seen more of Miss Clairmont's journal, whatever arrange- 
ment she may in her later life have chosen to exercise upon 
it. In general all documents are so fairly and fully cited, 
that Professor Dowden's pleadings for Shelley, though 
they may sometimes indispose and irritate the reader, pro- 
duce no obscuring of the truth ; the documents manifest 
it of themselves. Last but not least of Professor Dow- 
den's merits, he has provided his book with an excellent 
index. 

Undoubtedly this biography, with its full account of 
the occurrences of Shelley's private life, compels one to 
review one's former impresssion of him. Undoubtedly 
the brilliant and attaching rebel who in thinking for him- 
self had of old our sympathy so passionately with him, 
when we come to read his full biography makes us often 
and often inclined to cry out : '^ My God ! he had far 
better have thought like other peo^ole." There is a pass- 
age in Hogg's capitally written and most interesting 
account of Shelley which I wrote down when I first read it 
and have borne in mind ever since ; so beautifully it 
seemed to render the true Shelley. Hogg has been speak- 
ing of the intellectual expression of Shelley's features, and 
he goes on : *'Nor was the moral expression less beauti- 
ful than the intellect ; for there was a softness, a delicacy, 
a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise 
many) that air of profound religious veneration that char- 
acterizes the best work and chiefly the frescoes (and into 
these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters 
of Florence and of Eome." What we have of Shelley in 
poetry and prose suited with this charming picture of him ; 
Mrs. Shelley's account suited with it ; it was a possession 
which one would gladly have kept unimpaired. It still 



SHELLEY. 389 

subsists, I mnst now add ; it subsists even after one has 
read the present biography ; it consists, but so as by fire. 
It subsists with many a scar and stain ; never again will 
it have the same pureness and beauty which it had 
formerly. I regret this, as I have said, and I confess 
I do not see what has been gained. Our ideal Shelley 
was the true Shelley after all; what has been gained by mak- 
ing us at moments doubt it ? What has been gained by 
forcing upon as much in him which is ridiculous and 
odious, by compelling any fair mind, if it is to retain with 
a good conscience its ideal Shelley, to do that which I pro- 
pose to do now ? I propose to mark firmly what is ridic- 
ulous and odious in the Shelley brought to our knowledge 
by the new materials, and then to show that our former 
beautiful and lovable Shelley nevertheless survives. 

Almost everybody knows the main outline of the events of 
Shelley's life. It will be necessary for me, however, up to 
the date of his second marriage, to go through them here. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Hor- 
sham, in Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was of 
an old family of country gentlemen, and the heir to a bar- 
onetcy. He had one brother and five sisters, but the 
brother so much younger than himself as to be no com- 
panion for him in his boyhood at home, and after he was 
separated from home and England he never saw him. 
Shelley was brought up at Field Place with his sisters. 
At ten years old he was sent to a private school at Isle- 
worth, where he read Mrs. Radcliffe's romances and was 
fascinated by a popular scientific lecturer. After two 
years of private school he went in 1804 to Eton. Here he 
took no part in cricket or football, refused to fag, was 
was known as '' mad Shelley " and much tormented ; when 
tormented beyond endurance he could be dangerous. 
Certainly he was not happy at Eton ; but he had friends, 
he boated, he rambled about the country. His school 
lessons were easy to him, and his reading extended far be- 
yond them ; he read books on chemistry, he read Pliny's 
Natural History, Godwin's Political Justice, Lucretius, 
Franklin, Condorcet. It is said he was called ^^ atheist 



390 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Shelley" at Eton, but this is not so well established as his 
having been called ''mad Shelley." He was full, at any 
rate, of new and revolutionary ideas, and he declared at a 
later time that he was twice expelled from the school but 
recalled through the interference of his father. 

In the spring of 1810 Shelley, now in his eighteenth year, 
entered University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner. 
He had already written novels and poems ; a poem on the 
Wandering Jew, in seven or eight cantos, he sent to 
Campbell, and was told by Campbell, that there were 
but two good lines in it. He had solicited the corre- 
spondence of Mrs. Hemans, then Felicia Browne and 
unmarried ; he had fallen in love with a charming 
cousin, Harriet Grove. In the autumn of 1810 he found 
a publisher for his verse ; he also found a friend in a 
very clever and free-minded commoner of his college, 
Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who has admirably described 
the Shelley of those Oxford days, with his chemistry, 
his eccentric habits, his charm of look and character, 
his conversation, his shrill discordant voice. Shelley read 
incessantly. Hume's Essays produced a powerful impres- 
sion on him ; his free speculation led him to what his father, 
and worse still his cousin Harriet, thought " detestable 
principles ''; his cousin and family became estranged from 
him. He, on his part, became more and more incensed 
against the " bigotry " and " intolerance " which pro- 
duced such estrangement. " Here I swear, and as I break 
my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity, blast me — here I swear 
that never will I forgive intolerance." At the beginning 
of 1811 he prepared and published what he called a " leaf- 
let for letters," having for its title The Necessity of 
Atheism. He sent copies to all the bishops, to the Vice- 
Chancellor of Oxford, and to the heads of houses. On 
Lady Day he was summoned before the authorities of his 
College, refused to answer the question whether he had 
written The Necessity of Atheism, told the Master and 
Fellows that their proceedings would become a court of 
inquisitors but not free men in a free country," and 
was expelled for contumacy. Hogg wrote a letter of re- 



SHELLEY. 391 

monstrance to the authorities was in his turn summoned 
before them and questioned as to his share in the "leaf- 
let," and, refusing to answer, he also was expelled. 

Shelley settled with Hogg in lodgings in London. His 
father, excusably indignant, was not a wise man and 
managed his son ill. His plan of recommending Shelley 
to read Paley's Natural Tlieology, and of 7'eading it with 
him himself, makes us smile. Shelley, who about this 
time wrote of his younger sister, then at school at Clap- 
ham, ^^ There are some hopes of this dear little girl, she 
would be a divine little scion of infidelity if I could get 
hold of her," was not to have been cured by Paley's 
Natural Theology administered through Mr. Timothy 
Shelley. But by the middle of May Shelley's father had 
agreed to allow him two hundred pounds a year. Mean- 
while in visiting his sisters at their school in Clapham, 
Shelley made the acquaintance of a schoolfellow of theirs, 
Harriet Westbrook. She was a beautiful and lively girl, 
with a father who had kept a tavern in Mount Street, but had 
now retired from business, and one sister much older than 
herself, who encouraged in every possible way the ac- 
quaintance of her sister of sixteen with the heir to a 
baronetcy and a great estate. Soon Shelley heard that 
Harriet met with cold looks at her school for associating 
with an atheist ; his generosity and his ready indignation 
against ^^ intolerance " were roused. In the summer 
Harriet wrote to him that she was persecuted not at school 
only but at home also, that she was lonely and miserable, 
and would gladly put an end to her life. Shelley went to 
see her ; she owned her love for him, and he engaged 
himself to her. He told his cousin Charles Grove that 
his happiness had been blighted when the other Harriet, 
Charles's sister, cast him off ; that now the only thing 
worth living for was self-sacrifice. Harriet's persecutors 
became yet more troublesome, and Shelley, at the end of 
August, went off with her to Edinburgh and they were 
married. The entry in the register is this : — 

'' August 2Q, 1811.— Percy Bysshe Shelley, farmer, Sussex, and 
Miss Harriet Westbrook, St. A.ndrew Church Parish, daughter of 
Mr. John Westbrook, London." 



392 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

After five weeks in Edinburgh the young farmer and 
his wife came southwards and took lodgings at York, 
under the shadow of what Shelley calls that ^' gigantic 
pile of superstition," the Minster. But his friend Hogg 
was in a lawyer's office in York, and Hogg's society made 
the Minster endurable. Mr. Timothy Shelley's happiness 
in his son was naturally not increased by the runaway 
marriage ; he stopped his allowance, and Shelley de- 
termined to visit ^' this thoughtless man," as he calls his 
parent, and to ^' try the force of truth " lipon him. K'oth- 
ing could be effected ; Shelley's mother, too, was now 
against him. He returned to York to find that in his ab- 
sence his friend Hogg had been making love to Harriet, 
who had indignantly repulsed him. Shelley was shocked, 
but after a ^' terrible day " of explanation from Hogg, he 
^^ fully, freely pardoned him," promised to retain him 
still as *^ his friend, his bosom friend," and " hoped soon 
to convince him how lovely virtue was." But for the 
present it seemed better to separate. In November he and 
Harriet, with her sister Eliza, took a cottage at Keswick. 
Shelley was now in great straits for money ; the great 
Sussex neighbor of the Shelleys, the Duke of Norfolk, 
interposed in his favor, and his father and grandfather 
seem to have offered him at this time an income of £2000 
a year, if he would consent to entail the family estate. 
Shelley indignantly refused to ^^ forswear his principles," 
by accepting " a proposal so insultingly hateful." But in 
December his father agreed, though with an ill grace, to 
grant him his allowance of £200 a year again, and Mr. 
Westbrook promised to allow a like sum to his daughter. 
So after four months of marriage the Shelleys began 1812 
with an income of £400 a year. 

Early in February they left Keswick and proceeded to 
Dublin, where Shelley, who had prepared an address to 
the Catholics, meant to ^^ devote himself towards forward- 
ing the great ends of virtue and happiness in Ireland." 
Before leaving Keswick he wrote to William Godwin, '^ the 
regulator and former of his mind," making profession of 
his mental obligations to him, of his respect and veneration, 



SHELLEY. 393 

and soliciting Godwin^'s friendship. A correspondence 
followed ; Godwin pronounced his young disciple's plans 
for "^ disseminating the doctrines of philanthropy and 
freedom" in Ireland to be unwise ; Shelley bowed to his 
mentor's decision and gave up his Irish campaign, quit- 
ting Dublin on the 4th of April 1812. He and Harriet 
wandered first to Nant-Gwillt in South Wales, near the 
upper Wye, and from thence after a month or two to 
Lynmouth in North Devou, where he busied himself with 
his poem of Queen Mai, and. with sending to sea boxes 
and bottles containing a Declaration of Rights by him, in 
the hope that the winds and waves might carry his doc- 
trines where they would do good. But his Irish servant, 
bearing the prophetic name of Healy, posted the Declara- 
tion on the walls of Barnstaple and was taken up ; Shelley 
found himself watched and no longer able to enjoy Lyn- 
mouth in peace. He moved in September, 1812, to Tre- 
madoc, in North Wales, where be threw himself ardently 
into an enterprise for recovering a great stretch of drowned 
land from the sea. But at the beginning of October he 
and Harriet visited London, and Shelley grasped Godwin 
by the hand at last. At once an intimacy arose, but the 
future Mary Shelley — Godwin's daughter by his first wife, 
Mary Wollstonecraft — was absent on a visit in Scotland 
when the Shelleys arrived in London. They became ac- 
quainted, however, with the second Mrs. Godwin, on 
whom we have Charles Lamb's friendly comment: '^A 
very disgusting woman, and wears green spectacles !" 
with the amiable Fanny, Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter 
by Imlay, before her marriage with Godwin ; and probably 
also with Jane Clairmont, the second Mrs. Godwin's 
daughter by a first marriage, and herself, afterwards the 
mother of Byron's Allegra. Complicated relationships, as 
in the Theban story ! and there will be not wanting, pres- 
ently, something of the Theban horrors. During this 
visit of six weeks to London Shelley renewed his intimacy 
with Hogg ; in the middle of November he returned to 
Tremadoc. There he remained until the end of February 
1813, perfectly happy with Harriet^ reading widely, and 



894 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

working at his Queen Mab and at the notes to that poem. 
On the 26th of February an attempt was made, or so he 
fancied, to assassinate him, and in high nervous excite- 
ment he hurriedly left Tremadoc and repaired with 
Harriet to Dublin again. On this visit to Ireland he saw 
Killarney, but early in April he and Harriet were back 
again in London. 

There in June 1813 their daughter lanthe was born ; at 
the end of July they moved to Bracknell, in Berkshire. 
They had for neighbors there a Mrs. Boinville and her 
married daughter, whom Shelley found to be fascinating 
women, with a culture which to his wife was altogether 
wanting. Cornelia Turner, Mrs. Boinville's daughter, was 
melancholy, required consolation, and found it, Hogg tells 
us, in Petrarch's poetry; '* Bysshe entered at once fully 
into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing 
the tenderest and sweetest melancholy as every true poet 
ought." Peacock, a man of keen and cultivated mind, 
joined the circle at Bracknell. He and Harriet, not yet 
eighteen, used sometimes to laugh at the gushing senti- 
ment and enthusiasm of the Bracknell circle ; Harriet had 
also given offense to Shelley by getting a wet-nurse for her 
child ; in Professor Dowden's words, '^ the beauty of 
Harriet's motherly relation to her babe was marred in 
Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his home of a hire- 
ling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest 
office." But in September Shelley wrote a sonnet to his 
child which expresses his deep love for the mother also, 
to whom in March, 1814, he was remarried in London, lest 
the Scotch marriage should prove to have been in any 
point irregular. Harriet's sister Eliza, however, whom 
Shelley had at first treated with excessive deference, had 
now become hateful to him. And in the very month of 
the London marriage we find him writing to Hogg that he 
is staying with the Boinvilles, having ^'escaped, in the 
society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, 
from the dismaying solitude of myself." Cornelia Turner, 
he adds, whom he once thought cold and reserved, /' is the 
reverse of this, as she is the reverse of everything bad ; she 



SHELLEY. 395 

inherits all the divinity of her mother." Then comes a 
stanza, beginning 

" Thy dewy looks sink in my breast, 
Thy gentle words stir poison there." 

It has no meaning, he says ; it is only written in thought. 
'^ It is evident from this pathetic letter," says Professor 
Dowden, "that Shelley's happiness in his home had been 
fatally stricken." This is a curious way of putting the 
matter. To me what is evident is rather that Shelley had, 
to use Professor Dowden's words again — for in these things 
of high sentiment I gladly let him speak for me — " a too 
vivid sense that here (in the society of the Boinville fam- 
ily) were peace and joy and gentleness and love." In 
April come some more verses to the Boinvilles, which con- 
tain the first good stanza that Shelley wrote. In May 
comes a poem to Harriet, of which Professor Dowden's 
prose analysis is as poetic as the poem itself. " If she has 
something to endure (from the Boinville attachment), it 
is not much, and all her husband's weal hangs upon her 
loving endurance, for see how pale and wildered anguish 
has made him ! " Harriet, unconvinced, seems to have 
gone off to Bath in resentment, from whence, however, 
she kept up a constant correspondence with Shelley, who 
was now of age, and busy in London raising money on 
post-obit bonds for his own wants and those of the friend 
and former of his mind, Godwin. 

And now, indeed, it was to become true that if from the 
inflammable Shelley's devotion to the Boinville family poor 
Harriet had had "something to endure," yet this was 
" not much" compared with what was to follow. At God- 
win's house Shelley met Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his 
future wife, then in her seventeenth year. She was a 
gifted person, but, as Professor Dowden says, she "had 
breathed during her entire life an atmosphere of free 
thought." On the 8th of June Hogg called at Godwin's 
with Shelley ; Godwin was out, but " a door was partially 
and softly opened, a thrilling voice called ^ Shelley !' a 



396 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

tlirilling voice answered ' Mary ! ' '^ Shelley's summoner 
was "a very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale in- 
deed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan." 
Already they were ^^ Shelley" and **Mary" to one an- 
other ; '^ before the close of June they knew and felt," 
says Professor Dowden, *' that each was to the other in- 
expressibly dear." The churchyard of St. Pancras, where 
her mother was buried, became '^a place now doubly 
sacred to Mary, since on one eventful day Bysshe here 
poured forth his griefs, his hopes, his love, and she, in sign 
of everlasting union, placed her hand in his." In July 
Shelley gave her a copy of Queen Mob, printed but not 
published, and under the tender dedication to Harriet he 
wrote : '^ Cotint Slobendorf was about to marry a woman 
who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her selfishness 
by deserting him in prison." Mary added an inscription 
on her part : *' I love the author beyond all powers of ex- 
pression ... by that love we have promised to each other, 
although I may not be yours I can never be another's," — 
and a good deal more to the same effect. 

Amid these excitements Shelley was for some days with- 
out writing to Harriet, who applied to Hookham the pub- 
lisher to know what had happened. She was expecting 
her confinement ; '* I always fancy something dreadful has 
happened," she wrote, *^ if I do not hear from him . . . 
I cannot endure this dreadful state of suspense." Shelley 
then wrote to her, begging her to come to London ; and 
when she arrived there, he told her the state of his feelings, 
and proposed separation. The shock made Harriet ill ; 
and Shelley, says Peacock, *^ between his old feelings 
towards Harriet, and his new passion for Mary, showed in 
his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind 
^ suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insur- 
rection.' " Godwin grew uneasy about his daughter, and 
after a serious talk with her, wrote to Shelley. Under 
such circumstances. Professor Dowden tells us, " to youth, 
swift and decisive measures seem the best." In the early 
morning of the 28th of July 1814 ^^ Mary Godwin stepped 
across her father's threshold into the summer air," she 



SHELLEY. 397 

and Shelley went off together in a post-chaise to Dover, 
and from thence crossed to the Continent. 

On the 14:th of August the fugitives were at Troyes on 
their way to Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley addressed 
a letter to Harriet, of which the best description I can 
give is that it is precisely the letter which a man in the 
writer's circumstances should not have written. 

" My dearest Harriet (he begins). I write to you from this 
detestable town ; I write to show that I do not forget you ; I 
write to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will at last 
find one firm and constant friend to whom your interests will be 
always dear — by whom your feelings will never wilfully be in- 
jured. From none can you expect this but me — all else are 
either unfeeling or selfish, or have beloved friends of their own.'' 

Then follows a description of his journey with Mary from 
Paris, '^through a fertile country, neither interesting 
from the character of its inhabitants nor the beauty of 
the scenery, with a mule to carry our baggage, as Mary, 
who has not been sufficiently well to walk, fears the fatigue 
of walking." Like St. Paul to Timothy, he ends with 
commissions : — 

" I wish you to bring with you the two deeds which Tahourdin 
has to prepare for you, as also a copy of the settlement. Do not 
part with any of your money. But what shall be done about the 
books ? You can consult on the spot. With love to my sweet 
little lanthe, ever most affectionately yours, S. 

" I write in great haste ; we depart directly." 

Professor Dowden's flow of sentiment is here so agitat- 
ing, that I relieve myself by resorting to a drier world. 
Certainly my comment on this letter shall not be his, that 
it ''■ assures Harriet that her interests were still dear to 
Shelley, though now their lives had moved apart. " But 
neither will I call the letter an odious letter, a hideous 
letter. I prefer to call it, applying an untranslated French 
word, a tete letter. And it is hete from what is the signal, 
the disastrous want and weakness of Shelley, with all his 
fine intellectual gifts — his utter deficiency in humour. 

Harriet did not accept Shelley's invitation to join him 
and Mary in Switzerland. Money difficulties drove the 



398 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

travellers back to England in September. Godwin would 
not see Shelley, but he sorely needed, continually demanded 
and eagerly accepted, pecuniary help from his erring 
'^spiritual son." Between Godwin's wants and his own, 
Shelley was hard pressed. He got from Harriet, who still 
believed that he would return to her, twenty pounds which 
remained in her hands. In November she was confined ; 
a son and heir was born to Shelley. He went to see 
Harriet, but 'Hhe interview left husband and wife each 
embittered against the other." Friends were severe ; 
** when Mrs. Boinville wrote, her letter seemed cold and 
even sarcastic," says Professor Dowden. *^SSolitude," he 
continues, '^ unharassed by debts and duns, with Mary's 
companionship, the society of a few friends, and the de- 
lights of study and authorship, would have made these 
winter months to Shelley months of unusual happiness 
and calm." But, alas ! creditors were pestering, and 
even Harriet gave trouble. In January, 1815, Mary had 
to write in her journal this entry : *^ Harriet sends her 
creditors here ; nasty woman. Now we must change our 
lodgings." 

One day about this time Shelley asked Peacock, '^ Do 
you think Wordsworth could have written such poetry if 
he ever had dealings with money-lenders ? " Not only 
had Shelley dealings with money-lenders, he now had 
dealings with bailiffs also. But still he continued to read 
largely. In January, 1815, his grandfather. Sir Bysshe 
Shelley, died. Shelley went down into Sussex ; his father 
would not suffer him to enter the house, but he sat out- 
side the door and read Comus, while the reading of his 
grandfather's will went on inside. In February was born 
Mary's first child, a girl, who lived but a few days. All 
the spring Shelley was ill and harassed, but by June it 
was settled that he should have an allowance from his 
father of £1000 a year, and that his debts (including 
£1200 promised by him to Godwin) should be paid. He 
on his part paid Harriet's debts and allowed her £200 a 
year. In August he took a house on the borders of 
Windsor Park, and made a boating excursion up the 



SHELLEY. 399 

Thames as far as Lechlade, an excursion which produced 
his first entire poem of valne, the beautiful Stanza in 
Lechlade Churchyard. They were followed, later in the 
autumn, by Alastor. Henceforth, from this winter of 
1815 until he was drowned between Leghorn and Spezzia 
in July, 1822, Shelley's literary history is sufficiently given 
in the delightful introductions prefixed by Mrs. Shelley 
to the poems of each year. Much of the history of his 
life is there given also ; but with some of those " occur- 
rences of his private life *' on which Mrs. Shelley forbore 
to touch, and which are now made known to us in Pro- 
fessor Dowden's book, we have still to deal. 

Mary's first son, William, was born in January, 1816, 
and in February we find Shelley declaring himself 
'^ strongly urged, by the perpetual experience of neglect 
or enmity from almost every one but those who are sup- 
ported by my resources, to desert my native country, 
hiding myself and Mary from the contempt which we so 
unjustly endure.'' Early in May he left England with 
Mary and Miss Clairmont ; they met Lord Byron at 
Geneva and passed the summer by the Lake of Geneva in 
his company. Miss Clairmont had already in London, 
without the knowledge of the Shelleys, made Byron's 
acquaintance and become his mistress. Shelley deter- 
mined, in the course of the summer, to go back to Eng- 
land, and, after all, '^ to make that most excellent of 
nations my perpetual resting-place." In September he 
and his ladies returned ; Miss Clairmont was then expect- 
ing her confinement. Of her being Byron's mistress the 
Shelleys were now aware ; but '' the moral indignation," 
says Professor Dowden, -' which Byron's act might justly 
arouse, seems to have been felt by neither Shelley nor 
Mary." If Byron and Claire Clairmont, as she was now 
called, loved and were happy, all was well. 

The eldest daughter of the Godwin household, the 
amiable Fanny, was unhappy at home and in deep dejec- 
tion of spirits. Godwin was, as usual, in terrible straits 
for money. The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont settled 
themselves at Bath ; early in October Fanny Godwin 



400 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

passed througli Bath without their knowing it, travelled 
on to Swansea, took a bedroom at the hotel there, and 
was found in the morning dead, with a bottle of laudanum 
on the table beside her and these words in her hand- 
writing : — 

" I have long determined that the best thing I could do was 
to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was un- 
fortunate, ^ and whose life has only been a series of pain to those 
persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote 
her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, 
but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a 
creature ever existed as . . ." 

There is no signature. 

A sterner tragedy followed. On the 9th of November 
1816 Harriet Shelley left the house in Brompton where 
she was then living, and did not return. On the 10th of 
December her body was found in the Serpentine ; she had 
drowned herself. In one respect Professor Dowden re- 
sembles Providence : his ways are inscrutable. His com- 
ment on Harriet's death is : " There is no doubt she 
wandered from the ways of upright living." But he 
adds: ^^That no act of Shelley's, during the two years 
which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause 
the rash act which brought her life to its close, seems 
certain." Shelley had been living with Mary all the time ; 
only that ! 

On the 30th of December, 1816, Mary Godwin and 
Shelley were married. I shall pursue " the occurrences 
of Shelley's private life" no further. For the five years 
and a half which remain. Professor Dowden's book adds 
to our knowledge of Shelley's life much that is interest- 
ing ; but what was chiefly important we knew already. 
The new and grave matter which we did not know, or 
knew in the vaguest way only, but which Shelley's family 
and Professor Dowden have now thought it well to give 
us in full, ends with Shelley's second marriage. 

I regret, I say once more, that it has been given. It is 
a sore trial for our love of Shelley. What a set ! what a 

1 She was Mary WoUstonecraft's natural daughter by Inilay. 



SHELLEY. 401 

world ! is the exclamation that breaks from ns as we come 
to an end of this history of ''the occurrences of Shelley's 
private life/' I used the French word hete for a letter of 
Shelley's ; for the world in which we find him I can only 
use another French word, sale. Godwin's house of sordid 
horror, and Godwin's preaching and holding the hat, and 
the green-spectacled Mrs. Godwin, and Hogg the faithful 
friend, and Hunt the Horace of this precious world, and, 
to go up higher. Sir Timothy Shelley, a great country 
gentleman, feeling himself safe while '' the exalted mind of 
Norfolk [the drinking Duke] protects me with the world," 
and Lord Byron with his deep grain of coarseness and com- 
monness, his affectation, his brutal selfishness — what a set ! 
The history carries us to Oxford, and I think of the clerical 
and respectable Oxford of those old times, the Oxford of 
Copleston and the Kebles and Hawkins, and a hundred 
more, with the relief Keble declares himself to experience 
from Izaak Walton, 

'* When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose, 
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose." 

I am not only thinking of morals and the house of Godwin, 
I am thinking also of tone, bearing, dignity. I appeal to 
Cardinal Newman, if perchance he does me the honor to 
read these words, is it possible to imagine Copleston or 
Hawkins declaring himself safe '' while the exalted mind 
of the Duke of Norfolk protects me with the world " ? 

Mrs. Shelley, after her marriage and during Shelley's 
closing years, becomes attractive ; up to her marriage her 
letters and journal do not please. Her ability is manifest, 
but she is nut attractive. In the world discovered to us by 
Professor Dowden as surrounding Shelley up to 1817, the 
most pleasing figure is Poor Fanny Godwin ; after Fanny 
Godwin, the most pleasing figure is Harriet Shelley herself. 

Professor Dowden's treatment of Harriet is not worthy — 
so much he must allow me in all kindness, but also in all 
seriousness, to say — of either his taste or his judgment. 
His pleading for Shelley is constant, and he does more 
harm than good to Shelley by it. But here his champion- 



402 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

ship of Shelley makes him very unjust to a cruelly used 
and unhappy girl. For several pages he balances ttie 
question whether or not Harriet was unfaithful to Shel- 
ley before he left her for Mary, and he leaves the ques- 
tion unsettled. As usual Professor Dowden (and it is 
his signal merit) supplies the evidence decisive against 
himself. Thornton Hunt, not well disposed to Harriet, 
Hogg, Peacock, Trelawny, Hookham, and a member of 
Godwin's own family, are all clear in their evidence that 
up to her parting from Shelley Harriet was perfectly inno- 
cent. But that precious witness, Godwin, wrote in 1817 
that *^ she had proved herself unfaithful to her husband 
before their separation. . . Peace be to her shade !" 
Why, Godwin was the father of Harriet's successor. But 
Mary believed the same thing. She was Harriet's suc- 
cessor. But Shelley believed it too. He had it from God- 
win. But he was convinced of it earlier. The evidence for 
this is, that, in writing to Southey in 1820, Shelley declares 
that *^ the single passage of a life, otherwise not only 
spotless but spent in an impassioned pursuit of virtue, 
which looks like a blot," bears that appearance " merely 
because I regulated my domestic arrangements without 
deferring to the notions of the vulgar, although I might 
have done so quite as conveniently had I descended to 
their base thoughts." From this Professor Dowden con- 
cludes that Shelley believed he could have got a divorce 
from Harriet had he so wished. The conclusion is not 
clear. But even were the evidence perfectly clear that 
Shelley believed Harriet unfaithful when he parted from 
her, we should have to take into account Mrs. Shelley's 
most true sentence in her introduction to Alastor : ''In 
all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed him- 
self justified to his own conscience." 

Shelley's asserting a thing vehemently does not prove 
more than that he chose to believe it and did believe it. 
His extreme and violent changes of o2:)inion about people 
show this sufficiently. Eliza Westbrook is at one time '' a 
diamond not so large " as her sister Harriet but " more 
highly polished ; " and then : ** I certainly hate her with 



SHELLEY. 403 

all my heart and soul. I sometimes feel faint with the fa- 
tigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhor- 
rence for this miserable wretch." The antipathy, Hogg 
tells us, was as unreasonable as the former excess of defer- 
ence. To his friend Miss Kitchener he says : ^' Never shall 
that intercourse cease, which has been the day-dawn of my 
existence, the sun which has shed warmth on the cold 
drear length of the anticipated prospect of life." A little 
later, and she has become " the Brown Demon, a woman 
of desperate views and dreadful passions, but of cool and 
undeviating revenge ! " Even Professor Dowden admits 
that this is absurd ; that the real Miss Hitchener was not 
seen by Shelley, either when he adored or when he de- 
tested. 

Shelley's power of persuading himself was equal to any 
occasion ; but would not his conscientiousness and high 
feeling have prevented his exerting this power at poor Har- 
riet's expense ? To abandon her as he did, must he not have 
known her to be false ! Professor Dowden insists always 
on Shelley's ^^conscientiousness." Shelley himself speaks 
of his ^' impassioned pursuit of virtue." Leigh Hunt com- 
pared his life to that of " Plato himself, or, still more, a Py- 
thagorean," and added that he "never met a being who 
came nearer, perhaps so near, to the height of humanity," to 
being an ^' angel of charity." In many respects Shelley 
really resembled both a Pythagorean and an angel of 
charity. He loved high thoughts, he cared nothing for 
sumptuous lodging, fare, and raiment, he was poignantly 
afflicted at the sight of misery, he would have given away 
his last farthing, would have suffered in his own person, 
to relieve it. But in one important point he was like 
neither a Pythagorean nor an angel : he was extremely 
inflammable. Professor Dowden leaves no doubt on the 
matter. After reading his book, one feels sickened for 
ever of the subject of irregular relations ; God forbid that 
I should go into the scandals about Shelley's " Neapolitan 
charge," about Shelley and Emilia Viviani, about Shelley 
and Miss Clairmont, and the rest of it ! I will say only 
that it is visible enough that when the passion of love wag 



404 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

aroused in Shelley (and it was aroused easily) one could 
not be sure of him, his friends could not trust him. We 
have seen him with the Boinville family. With Emilia 
Viviani he is the same. If he is left much alone with 
Miss Clairmont, he evidently makes Mary uneasy ; nay, 
he makes Professor Dowden himself uneasy. And I con- 
clude that an entirely human inflammability, joined to an 
inhuman want of humor and a superhuman power of 
self-deception, are the causes which chiefly explain Shel- 
ley's abandonment of Harriet in the first place, and then 
his behavior to her and his defense of himself after- 
wards. 

His misconduct to Harriet, his want of humor his self- 
deception, are fully brought before us for the first time by 
Professor Dowden's book. Good morals and good criticism 
alike forbid that when all this is laid bare to us we should 
deny, or hide, or extenuate it. Nevertheless I go back 
after all to what I said at the 'beginning ; still our ideal 
Shelley, the angelic Shelley, subsists. Unhappily the 
data for this Shelley we had and knew long ago, while the 
data for the unattractive Shelley are fresh ; and what is 
fresh is likely to fix our attention more than what is 
familiar. But Professor Dowden 's volumes, which give so 
much, which give too much, also afford data for picturing 
anew the Shelley who delights, as well as for picturing for 
the first time a Shelley who, to speak plainly, disgusts ; 
and with what may renew and restore our impression of 
the delightful Shelley I shall end. 

The winter at Marlow, and the ophthalmia caught 
among the cottages of the poor, we knew, but we have 
from Professor Dowden more details of this winter and 
of Shelley's work among the poor ; we have above all, for 
the first time I believe, a line of verse of Shelley's own 
which sums up truly and perfectly this most attractive 
side of him — 

" I am the friend of the unfriended poor." 

But that in Shelley on which I would especially dwell is 
that in him which contrasts most with the ignobleness of 



SHELLEY. 405 

the world in which we have seen him living, and with the 
pernicious nonsense which we have found him talking. 
The Shelley of ^^ marvelous gentleness," of feminine re- 
finement with gracious and considerate manners, " a per- 
fect gentleman, entirely without arrogance or aggressive 
egotism," completely devoid of the proverbial and ferocious 
vanity of authors and poets, always disposed to make little 
of his own work and to prefer that of others, of reverent 
enthusiasm for the great and wise, of high and tender 
seriousness, of heroic generosity, and of a delicacy in 
rendering services which was equal to his generosity — the 
Shelley who was all this is the Shelley with whom I wish 
to end. He may talk nonsense about tyrants and priests, 
but what a high and noble ring in such a sentence as the 
following, written by a young man who is refusing £2000 
a year rather than consent to entail a great property ! 

" That I should entail £120,000 of command over labour, of 
power to remit this, to employ it for benevolent purposes, on 
one whom I know not — who might, instead of being the bene- 
factor of mankind, be its bane, or use this for the worst purposes, 
which the real delegates of ray chance-given property might 
convert into a most useful instrument of benevolence ! No ! 
this you will not suspect me of." 

And again : — 

" I desire money because I think I know the use of it. It 
commands labor, it give leisure ; and to give leisure to those 
who will employ it in the forwarding of truth is the noblest 
present an individual can make to the whole." 

If there is extravagance here, it is extravagance of a 
beautiful and rare sort, like Shelley's '' underhand ways " 
also, which differed singularly, the cynic Hogg tells us, 
from the underhand ways of other people ; " the latter 
were concealed because they were mean, selfish, sordid ; 
Shelley's secrets, on the contrary (kindnesses done by 
stealth), were hidden through modesty, delicacy, gener- 
osity, refinement of soul." 

His forbearance to Godwin, to Godwin lecturing and 
renouncing him and at the same time holding out, as I 



406 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

have said, his hat to liim for alms, is wonderful ; but the 
dignity with which he at last, in a letter perfect for pro- 
priety of tone, reads a lesson to his ignoble father-in-law, 
is in the best possible style : — 

" Perhaps it is well that you should be informed that I con- 
sider your last letter to be written in a style of haughtiness and 
encroachment which neither awes nor imposes on me ; but I have 
no desire to transgress the limits which you place to our inter- 
course, nor in any future instance will I make any remarks but 
such as arise from the strict question in discussion." 

And again — 

"My astonishment, and, I will confess, when I have been 
treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my indignation, 
has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my nature, any con- 
siderations should have prevailed on you to have been thus harsh 
and cruel. I lamented also over my ruined hopes of all that 
your genius once taught me to expect from your virtue, when I 
found that for yourself, your family, and your creditors, you 
would submit to that communication with me which you once 
rejected and abliorred, and which no pity for my poverty or 
suffering, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort." 

Moreover, though Shelley has no humor, he can show 
as quick and sharp a tact as the most practised man of the 
world. He has been with Byron and the Countess Guic- 
cioli, and he writes of the latter — 

*'La Guiccioli is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, 
who has sacrificed an immense future for the sake of Lord 
Byron, and who, if I know anything of my friend, of her, and 
of human nature, will hereafter have plenty of opportunity to 
repent her rashness," 

Tact. also, and something better than tact, he shows in 
his dealings, in order to befriend Leigh Hunt, with Lord 
Byron. He writes to Hunt : — 

" Particular circumstances, or rather, I should say, particular 
dispositions in Lord Byron's character, render the close and ex- 
clusive intimacy with him, in which I find myself, intolerable to 
me ; thus much, my best friend, I will confess and confide to 
you. No feelings of my own shall injure or interfere with what 



SHELLEY. 407 

is now nearest to them— your interest ; and I will take care to 
preserve the little influence I may have over this Proteus, in 
whom such strange extremes are reconciled, until we meet." 

And so we have come back again, at last, to onr original 
Shelley— to the Shelley of the lovely and well-known 
picture, to the Shelley with '' flushed, feminine, artless 
face," the Shelley '' blushing like a girl," of Trelawny. 
Professor Dowden gives us some further attempts at por- 
traiture. One by a Miss Eose, of Shelley at Marlow : — 

" He was the most interesting figure I ever saw ; his eyes like 
a deer's, bright but rather wild ; his white throat unfettered ; 
his slender but to me almost faultless shape ; his brown long 
coat with curling lambs' wool collar and cuffs — in fact, his whole 
appearance—are as fresh in my recollection as an occurrence of 
yesterday." 

Feminine enthusiasm may be deemed suspicions, but 
a Captain Kennedy must surely be able to keep his head. 
Captain Kennedy was quartered at Horsham in 1813, and 
saw Shelley when he was on a stolen visit, in his father's 
absence, at Field Place : — 

"He received me with frankness and kindliness, as if he had 
known me from childhood, and at once won my heart. I fancy 
I see him now as he sate by the window, and hear his voice, the 
tones of which impressed me with his sincerity and simplicity. 
His resemblance to his sister Elizabeth was as striking as if they 
had been twins. His eyes were most expressive ; his complexion 
beautifully fair, his features exquisitely fine ; his hair was dark, 
and no peculiar attention to its arrangement was manifest. In 
person he was slender and gentlemanlike, but inclined to stoop ; 
his gait was decidedly not military. The general appearance 
indicated great delicacy of constitution. One would at once 
pronounce of him that he was different from other men. There 
was an earnestness in his manner and such perfect gentleness of 
breeding and freedom from everything artificial as charmed 
every one. I never met a man who so immediately won upon 
me." 

Mrs. Gisborne's son, who knew Shelley well at Leghorn, 
declared Captain Kennedy's description of him to be ''the 
best and most truthful I have ever seen." 

To all this we have to add the charm of the man's 



408 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

writings — of Shelley's poetry. It is his poetry, above 
everything else, which for many people establishes that 
he is an angel. Of his poetry I have not space now to 
speak. But let no one suppose that a want of humor and 
a self-delusion such as Shelley's have no effect upon a 
man's poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not 
entirely sane, and Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane 
either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty 
and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting 
nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is ''a 
beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his 
luraiuoas wings in vain." 



XYIII. 
COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.' 

In reviewing at the time of its first publication, thirty 
years ago, Flaubert's remarkable novel of Madame Bovary, 
Sainte-Beuve observed that in Flaubert we come to another 
manner, another kind of inspiration, from those which 
had prevailed hitherto ; we find ourselves dealing, he said, 
with a man of a new and different generation from novel- 
ists like George Sand. The ideal has ceased, the lyric 
vein is dried up ; the new men are cured of lyricism and 
the ideal ; *^ a severe and pitiless truth has made its entry, 
as the last word of experience, even into art itself." The 
characters of the new literature of fiction are ^* science, 
a spirit of observation, maturity, force, a touch of hard- 
ness." U ideal a cesse, le lyrique a tari. 

The spirit of observation and the touch of hardness (let 
us retain these mild and inoffensive terms) have since been 
carried in the French novel very far. So far have they 
been carried, indeed, that in spite of the advantage which 
the French language, familiar to the cultivated classes 
everywhere, confers on the French novel, this novel has 
lost much of its attraction for those classes ; it no longer 
commands their attention as it did formerly. The fam- 
ous English novelists have passed away, and have left no 
successors of like fame. It is not the English novel, there- 
fore, which has inherited the vogue lost by the French 
novel. It is a novel of a country new to literature, or at 
any rate unregarded, till lately, by the general public of 
readers : it is the novel of Kussia. The Russian novel 

1 Published in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1887. 

409 



410 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

has now the vogue, and deserves to have it. If fresh 
literary productions maintain this vogue and enhance it, 
we shall all be learning Russian. 

The Slav nature, or at any rate the Russian nature, the 
Russian nature as it shows itself in the Russian novels, 
seems marked by an extreme sensitiveness, a consciousness 
most quick and acute both for what the man's self is ex- 
periencing, and also for what others in contact with him 
are thinking and feeling. In a nation full of life, but 
young, and newly in contact with an old and powerful civili- 
zation, this sensitiveness and self-consciousness are prompt 
to appear. In the Americans, as well as in the Russians, 
we see them active in a high degree. They are somewhat 
agitating and disquieting agents to their possessor, but 
they have, if they get fair play, great powers for evoking 
and enriching a literature. But the Americans, as we 
know, are apt to set them at rest in the manner of my 
friend Colonel Higginson of Boston. '^ As I take it, Na- 
ture said, some years since : *' Thus far the English is my 
best race ; but we have had Englishmen enough ; we need 
something with a little more buoyancy than the English- 
man ; let us lighten the structure, even at some peril in 
the process. Put in one drop more of the nervous fluid, 
and make the American." With that drop, a new range 
of promise opened on the human race, and a lighter, finer, 
more highly organized type of mankind was born." Peo- 
ple who by this sort of thing give rest to their sensitive 
and busy self-consciousness may very well, perhaps, be on 
their way to great material prosperity, to great political 
power ; but they are scarcely on the right way to a great 
literature, a serious art. 

The Russian does not assuage his sensitiveness in this 
fashion. The Russian man of letters does not make Na- 
ture say : " The Russian is my best race." He finds re- 
lief to his sensitiveness in letting his perceptions have per- 
fectly free play, and in recording their reports with per- 
fect fidelity. The sincereness with which the reports are 
given has even something childlike and touching. In the 
novel of which I am going to speak there is not a line, not 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 411 

a trait, brought in for the glorification of Enssia, or to 
feel vanity ; things and characters go as nature takes 
them, and the author is absorbed in seeing how nature 
takes them and in relating it. But we have here a condi- 
tion of things which is highly favorable to the produc- 
tion of good literature, of good art. We have great sensi- 
tiveness, subtlety, and finesse, addressing themselves with 
entire disinterestedness and simplicity to the representa- 
tion of human life. . The Russian novelist is thus master 
of a spell to which the secrets of human nature — both 
what is external and what is internal, gesture and manner 
no less than thought and feeling — willingly make them- 
selves known. The crown of literature is poetry, and the 
Russians have not yet had a great poet. But in that form 
of imaginative literature which in our day is the most pop- 
ular and the most possible, the Russians at the present 
moment seem to me to hold, as Mr. Gladstone would say, 
the field. They have great novelists, and one of their 
great novelists I wish now to speak. 

Count Leo Tolstoi is about sixty years old, and tells us 
that he shall write novels no more. He is now occupied 
with religion and with the Christian life. His writings 
concerning these great matters are not allowed, I believe, to 
obtain publication in Russia, but instalments of them in 
French and English reach us from time to time. I find 
them very interesting, but I find his novel of Anna Ka- 
reiiine more interesting still. I believe that many readers 
prefer to Anna Karenine Count Tolstoi's other great novel, 
La Guerre et la Paix. But in the novel one prefers, I 
think, to have the novelist dealing with the life which he 
knows from having lived it, rather than with the life 
which he knows from books or hearsay. If one has to 
choose a representative work of Thackeray, it is Vanity 
Fair which one could take rather than The Virginians. 
In like manner I take Anna Karenine as the novel best 
representing Count Tolstoi. I use the French translation ; 
in general, as I long ago said, work of thi^ kind is better 
done in France than in England, and Anna Karenine is 
perhaps also a novel which goes better into French than 



412 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

into English, just as Frederika Bremer's Home goes into 
English better than into French. After I have done with 
Anna Karenine I must say something of Count Tolstoi's 
religious writings. Of these too I use the French transla- 
tion, so far as it is available. The English translation, 
however, which came into my hands late, seems to be 
in general clear and good. Let me say in passing that 
it has neither the same arrangement, nor the same titles, 
nor altogether the same contents, with the French transla- 
tion. 

There are many characters in Amia Karenine — too many 
if we look in it for a work of art in which the action shall 
be vigorously one, and to that one action everything shall 
converge. There are even two main actions extending 
throughout the book, and we keep passing from one of 
them to the other — from the affairs of Anna and Wronsky 
to the affairs of Kitty and Levine. People appear in con- 
nection with these two main actions whose appearance and 
proceedings do not in the least contribute to develop them ; 
incidents are multiplied which we expect are to lead to 
something important, but which do not. What, for in- 
stance, does the episode of Kitty's friend "VVarinka and 
Levine's brother Serge Ivanitch, their inclination for one 
another and its failure to come to anything, contribute to 
the development of either the character or the fortunes of 
Kitty and Levine ? What does the incident of Levine's 
long delay in getting to church to be married, a delay 
which as we read of it seems to have significance, really 
import ? It turns out to import absolutely nothing, and 
to be introduced solely to give the author the pleasure of 
telling us that all Levine's shirts had been packed up. 

But the truth is we are not to take Anna. KarAnine as a 
work of art ; we are to take it as a piece of life. A pie^e" 
of life it is. The author has not invented and combined 
it, he has seen it ; it has all happened before his inward 
eye, and it was in this wise that it happened. Levine's 
shirts were packed up, and he was late for his wedding in 
consequence; Warinka and Serge Ivanitch met at Levine's 
country-house and went out walking together ; Serge was 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 413 

very near proposing, but did not. The antlior saw it all 
happening so — saw it, and therefore relates it ; and what 
his novel in this way loses in art it gains in reality. 

For this is the result which, by his extraordinary fine- 
ness of perception, and by his sincere fidelity to it, the 
author achieves ; he works in us a sense of the absolute 
reality of his personages and their doings. Anna's 
shoulders, and masses of hair, and half-shut eyes ; Alexis 
Karenine's up- drawn eyebrows, and tired smile, and crack- 
ing finger-joints ; Stiva^s eyes suffused with facile moist- 
ure — these are as real to us as any of those outward 
peculiarities which in our own circle of acquaintance we 
are noticing daily, while the inner man of our own circle 
of acquaintance, happily or unhappily, lies a great deal 
less clearly revealed to us than that of Count Tolstoi's 
creations. 

I must speak of only a few of these creations, the chief 
personages and no more. The book opens with '' Stiva," 
and who that has once made Stiva's acquaintance will ever 
forget him ? We are living, in Count Tolstoi's novel, among 
the great people of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nobles 
and the high functionaries, the governing class of Russia. 
Stepane Arcadievitch — '' Stiva" — is Prince Oblonsky, and 
descended from Rurik, although to think of him as any- 
thing except ^^ Stiva" is difficult. His air souriant, his 
good looks, his satisfaction ; his ^^ray," which made the 
Tartar waiter at the club joyful in contemplating it ; his 
pleasure in oysters and champagne, his pleasure in making 
people happy and in rendering services ; his need of 
money, his attachment to the French governess, his dis- 
tress at his wife's distress, his affection for her and the 
children ; his emotion and suffused eyes, while he quite 
dismisses the care of providing funds for household ex- 
penses and education ; and the French attachment, con- 
tritely given up to-day only to be succeeded by some other 
attachment to-morrow — no never, certainly, shall we come 
to forget Stiva. Anna, the heroine, is Stiva's sister. His 
wife Dolly (these English diminutives are common among 
Count Tolstoi's ladies) is daughter of the Prince and 



^14 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

Princess Cherbatzky, grandees who show ns Russian high 
life by its most respectable side ; the Prince, in particular, 
is excellent — simple, sensible, right-feeling ; a man of 
dignity and honor. His daughters, Dolly and Kitty, are 
charming. Dolly, Stiva's wife, is sorely tried by her hus- 
band, full of anxieties for the children, with no money to 
spend on them or herself, poorly dressed, worn and aged 
before her time. She has moments of despairing doubt 
whether the gay people may not be after all in the right, 
whether virtue and principle answer ; whether happiness 
does not dwell with adventuresses and profligates, brilliant 
and perfectly dressed adventuresses and profligates, in 
a land flowing with roubles and champagne. But in a 
quarter of an hour she comes right again and is herself — 
a nature straight, honest, faithful, loving, sound to the 
core ; such she is and such she remains ; she can be no 
other. Her sister Kitty is at bottom of the same temper, 
but she has her experience to get, while Dolly, when the 
book begins, has already acquired hers. Kitty is adored 
by Levine, in whom we are told that many traits are to be 
found of the character and history of Count Tolstoi him- 
self. Levine belongs to the world of great people by his 
birth and property, but he is not at all a man of the world. 
He has been a reader and thinker, he has a conscience, he 
has public spirit and would ameliorate the condition of the 
people, he lives on his estate in the country, and occupies 
himself zealously with local business, schools and agricul- 
ture. But he is shy, apt to suspect and to take offence, 
somewhat impracticable, out of his element in the gay 
world of Moscow. Kitty likes him, but her fancy has 
been taken by a brilliant guardsman. Count Wronsky, 
who has paid her attentions. Wronsky is described to us by 
Stiva ; he is '' one of the finest specimens of the je^messe 
doree of St. Petersburg ; immensely rich, handsome, aide- 
de-camp to the emperor, great interest at his back, and a 
good fellow notwithstanding ; more than a good fellow, 
intelligent besides and well read — a man who has a splen- 
did career before him." Let us complete the picture by 
adding that Wronsky is a powerful man, over thirty, bald 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 415 

at the top of his head, with irreproachable manners, cool 
and calm, but a little haughty. A hero, one murmurs to 
oneself, too much of the Guy Livingstone type, though 
without the bravado and exaggeration. And such is, 
justly enough perhaps, the first impression, an impression 
which continues all through the first volume ; but Wron- 
sky, as we shall see, improves towards the end. 

Kitty discourages Levine, who retires in misery and con- 
fusion. But Wronsky is attracted by Anna Karenine, 
and ceases his attentions to Kitty. The impression made 
on her heart by AYronsky was not deep ; but she is so keenly 
mortified with herself, so ashamed, and so upset, that she 
falls ill, and is sent with her family to winter abroad. 
There she regains health and mental composure, and dis- 
covers at the same time that her liking for Levine was 
deeper than she knew, that it was a genuine feeling, a 
strong and lasting one. On her return they meet, their 
hearts come together, they are married ; and in spite of 
Levine's waywardness, irritability, and unsettlement of 
mind, of which I shall have more to say presently, they 
are profoundly happy. Well, and who could help being 
happy with Kitty ? So I find myself adding impatiently. 
Count Tolstoi's heroines are really so living and charming 
that one takes them, fiction though they are, too seriously. 

But the interest of the book centers in Anna Karenine. 
She is Stiva's sister, married to a high official at St. Peters- 
burg, Alexis Karenine. She has been married to him 
nine years, and has one child, a boy named Serge. The 
marriage had not brought happiness to her, she had found 
in it no satisfaction to her heart and soul, she had a sense 
of want and isolation ; but she is devoted to her boy, oc- 
cupied, calm. The charm of her personality is felt even 
before she appears, from the moment when we hear of her 
being sent for as the good angel to reconcile Dolly with 
Stiva. Then she arrives at the Moscow station from St. 
Petersburg, and we see the gray eyes with their long eye- 
lashes, the graceful carriage, the gentle and caressing 
smile on the fresh lips, the vivacity restrained but waiting 
to break through, the fulness of life, the softness and 



416 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

strength joined, the harmony, the bloom, the charm. 
She goes to Dolly, and achieves, with infinite tact and 
tenderness, the task of reconciliation. At a ball a few 
days later, we add to our first impression of Anna's beauty, 
dark hair, a quantity of little cnrls over her temples and 
at the back of her neck, sculpturaLshoulders, firm throat, 
and beautiful arms. She is in a plain dress of black vel- 
vet with a pearl necklace, a bunch of forget-me-nots in 
the front of her dress, another in her hair. This is Anna 
Karenine. 

She had traveled from St. Petersburg with Wronsky's 
mother ; had seen him at the Moscow station, where he 
came to meet his mother, had been struck with his looks 
and manner, and touched by his behavior in an accident 
which happened while they were in the station to a poor 
workman crushed by a train. At the ball she meets him 
again ; she is fascinated by him and he by her. She had 
been told of Kitty's fancy, and had gone to the ball mean- 
ing to help Kitty ; but Kitty is forgotten, or any rate 
neglected ; the spell which draws Wronsky and Anna is 
irresistible. Kitty finds herself opposite to them in a 
quadrille together : — 

" She seemed to remark in Anna the symptoms of an over-ex- 
citement which she herself knew from experience — that of suc- 
cess. Anna appeared to her as if intoxicated with it. Kitty 
knew to what to attribute that brilliant and animated look, that 
happy and triumphant smile, those half -parted lips, those move- 
ments full of grace and harmony." 

Anna returns to St. Petersburg, and Wronsky returns 
there at the same time ; they meet on the journey, they 
keep meeting in society, and Anna begins to find her hus- 
band, who before had not been sympathetic, intolerable. 
Alexis Karenine is much older than herself, a bureaucrat, 
a formalist, a poor creature ; he has conscience, there is a 
root of goodness in him, but on the surface and until 
deeply stirred he is tiresome, pedantic, vain, exasperating. 
The change in Anna is not in the slightest degree com- 
prehended by him ; he sees nothing which an intelligent 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 417 

man might in such a case see, and does nothing which an 
intelligent man would do. Anna abandons herself to her 
passion for Wronsky. 

I remember M. Nisard saying to me many years ago at 
theEcole Normale in Paris, that he respected the English 
because they are une nation qui sait se gener — people who 
can put constraint on themselves and go through what is 
disagreeable. Perhaps in the Slav nature this valuable 
faculty is somewhat wanting ; a very strong impulse is too 
much regarded as irresistible, too little as what can be 
resisted and ought to be resisted however difficult and 
disagreeable the resistance may be. In our high society 
with its pleasure and dissipation, laxer notions may to 
eome extent prevail ; but in general an English mind will 
be startled by Anna's suffering herself to be so over- 
whelmed and irretrievably carried away by her passion, 
by her almost at once regarding it, apparently, as some- 
thing which it was hopeless to fight against. And 
this I say irrespectively of the worth of her lover. 
Wronsky's gifts and graces hardly qualify him, one might 
think, to be the object of so instantaneous and mighty a 
passion on the part of a woman like Anna. But that is 
not the question. Let us allow that these passions are in- 
calculable ; let us allow that one of the male sex scarcely 
does justice, perhaps, to the powerful and handsome 
guardsman and his attractions. But if Wronsky had been 
even such a lover as Alcibiades or the Master of Kavens- 
wood, still that Anna, being what she is and her circum- 
stances being what they are, should show not a hope, 
hardly a thought, of conquering her passion, of escaping 
from its fatal power, is to our notions strange and a little 
bewildering. 

I state the objection ; let me add that it is the triumph 
of Anna's charm that it remains paramount for us never- 
theless ; that throughout her course, with its failures, er- 
rors, and miseries, still the impression of her large, fresh, 
rich, generous, delightful nature, never leaves us — keeps 
our sympathy, keeps even, I had almost said, our respect. 

To return to the story. Soon enough poor Anna begins 
27 



418 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

to experience the truth of what the Wise Man told ns long 
ago, that "^the way of transgressors is hard." Her agita- 
tion at a steeple-chase where Wronsky is in danger attracts 
her husband's notice and provokes his remonstrance. He 
is bitter and contemptuous. In a transport of passion 
Anna declares to him that she is his wife no longer ; that 
she loves Wronsky, belongs to Wronsky. Hard at first, 
formal, cruel, thinking only of himself, Karenine, who, as 
I have said, has a conscience, is touched by grace at the 
moment when Anna's troubles reach their height. He 
returns to her to find her with a child just born to her and 
Wronsky, the lover in the house and Anna apparently 
dying. Karenine has words of kindness and forgiveness 
only. The noble and victorious effort transfigures him, 
and all that her husband gains in the eyes of Anna, her 
lover Wronsky loses. Wronsky comes to Anna's bedside, 
and standing there by Karenine, buries his face in his 
hands. Anna says to him, in the hurried voice of fever : — 

" ' Uncover your face ; look at that man ; he is a saint. Yes, 
uncover your face ; uncover it,' she repeated with an angry air. 
' Alexis, uncover his face ; I want to see him.' 

" Alexis took the hands of Wronsky and uncovered his face, 
disfigured by suffering and humiliation. 

" ' Give him your hand ; pardon him.' 

" Alexis stretched out his hand without even seeking to restrain 
his tears. 

" 'Thank God, thank God!' she said ; 'all is ready now. 
How ugly those flowers are," she went on, pointing to the wall- 
paper ; ' they are not a bit like violets. My God, my God ! when 
will all this end ? Give me morphine, doctor — I want morphine. 
Oh, my God, my God ! ' " 

She seems dying, and Wronsky rushes out and shoots 
himself. And so, in a common novel, the story would end. 
Anna would die, Wronsky would commit suicide, Kare- 
nine would survive, in possession of our admiration and 
sympathy, But the story does not always end so in life ; 
neither does it end so in Count Tolstoi's novel. Anna re- 
covers from her fever, Wronsky from his wound. Anna's 
passion for Wronsky reawakeus, her estrangement from 
Karenine returns. ISTor does Karenine remain at the 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 419 

heiglit at which in the forgiveness scene we saw him. He 
is formal, pedantic, irritating. Alas ! even if he were not 
all these, perhaps even his ijince-nez, and his rising eye- 
brows, and his cracking langer-joints, would have been 
provocation enough. Anna and Wronsky depart together. 
They stay for a time in Italy, then return to Russia. But 
her position is false, her disquietude incessant, and happi- 
ness is impossible for her. She takes opium every night, 
only to find that ^' not poppy nor mandragora shall ever 
medicine her to that sweet sleep which she owed yester- 
day.'' Jealousy and irritability grow upon her ; she tor- 
tures Wronsky, she tortures herself. Under these trials 
Wronsky, it must be said, comes out well, and rises in our 
esteem. His love for Anna endures ; he behaves, as our 
English phrase is, '' like a gentleman " ; his patience is in 
general exemplary. But then Anna, let us remember, is 
to the last, through all the fret and misery, still Anna ; 
always with something which charms ; nay, with some- 
thing in her nature, which consoles and does good. Her 
life, however, was becoming impossible under its existing 
conditions. A trifling misunderstanding brought the in- 
evitable end. After a quarrel with Anna, AYronsky had 
gone one morning into the country to see his mother ; 
Anna summons him by telegraph to return at once, and 
receives an answer from him that he cannot return before 
ten at night. She follows him to his mother's place in 
the country, and at the station hears what leads her to 
believe that he is not coming back. Maddened with jeal- 
ousy and misery, she descends the platform and throws 
herself under the wheels of a goods train passing through 
the station. It is over — the graceful head is untouched, 
but all the rest is a crushed, formless heap. Poor Anna ! 

We have been in a world which misconducts itself nearly 
as much as the world of a French novel all palpitating 
with ^^ modernity." But there are two things in which 
the Russian novel — Count Tolstoi's novel at any rate — is 
very advantageously distinguished from the type of novel 
now so much in request in France. In the first place, 



420 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

there is no fine sentiment, at once tiresome and false. We 
are not told to believe, for example, that Anna is wonder- 
fully exalted and emiobled by her passion for Wronsky. 
The English reader is thus saved from many a groan of 
impatience. The other thing is yet more important. Our 
Russian novelist deals abundantly with criminal passion and 
with adultery, but does not seem to feel himself owing 
any service to the goddess Lubricity, or bound to put in 
touches at this goddess's dictation. Much in Anna Karenine 
is painful, much is unpleasant, but nothing is of a nature to 
trouble the senses, or to please those who wish their senses 
troubled. This taint is wholly absent. In the French 
novels where it is so abundantly present its baneful effects 
do not end with itself. Burns long ago remarked with 
deep truth that it i:^etrifies feeling. Let us revert for a 
moment to the powerful novel of which I spoke at the 
outset, Madame Bovary. Undoubtedly the taint in ques- 
tion is present in Madame Bovary, although to a much 
less degree than in more recent French novels, which will 
be in every one's mind. But Madame Bovary, with this 
taint, is a work oi petrified feeling ; over it hangs an at- 
mosphere of bitterness, irony, impotence ; not a personage 
in the book to rejoice or console us ; the springs of fresh- 
ness and feeling are not there to create such personages. 
Emma Bovary follows a course in some respects like that 
of Anna, but where, in Emma Bovary, is Annans charm ? 
The treasures of compassion, tenderness, insight, which 
alone, amid such guilt and misery, can enable charm to 
subsist and to emerge, are wanting to Flaubert. He is cruel 
with the cruelty of petrified feeling, to his poor heroine ; 
he pursues her without pity or pause, as with malignity ; 
he is harder upon her himself than any reader even, I 
think, will be inclined to be. 

But where the springs of feeling have carried Count 
Tolstoi, since he created Anna ten or twelve years ago, we 
have now to see. 

We must return to Oonstantine Dmitrich Levine. 
Levine, as I have already said, thinks. Between the age 
of twenty and that of thirty -five he had lost, he tells us, 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 421 

the Christian belief in which he had been brought up, a 
loss of which examples nowadays abound certainly every- 
where, but which in Kussia, as in France, is among all 
young men of the upper and cultivated class more a mat- 
ter of course, perhaps, more universal, more avowed, than 
it is with us. Levine had adopted the scientific notions 
current all round him ; talked of cells, organisms, the in- 
destructibility of matter, the conservation of force, and 
was of opinion, with his comrades of the university, that 
religion no longer existed. But he was of a serious nature, 
and the question what his life meant, whence it came, 
whither it tended, presented themselves to him in moments 
of crisis and affliction with irresistible importunity, and 
getting no answer, haunted him, tortured him, made him 
think of suicide. 

Two things, meanwhile, he noticed. One was, that he 
and his university friends had been mistaken in supposing 
that Christian belief no longer existed ; they bad lost it, 
but they were not all the world. Levine observed that the 
persons to whom he was most attached, his own wife Kitty 
amongst the number, retained it and drew comfort from 
it ; that the women generally, and almost the whole of 
the Eussian common people, retained it and drew comfort 
from it. The other was, that his scientific friends, though 
not troubled like himself by questionings about the mean- 
ing of human life, were untroubled by such questionings, 
not because they had got an answer to them, but because, 
entertaining themselves intellectually with the considera- 
tion of the cell theory, and evolution, and the indestrncti- 
bility of matter, and the conservation of force, and the 
like, they were satisfied with this entertainment, and did 
not perplex themselves with investigating the meaning and 
object of their own life at all. 

But Levine noticed further that he himself did not ac- 
tually proceed to commit suicide ; on the contrary, he lived 
on his lands as his father had done before him, busied him- 
self with all the duties of his station, married Kitty, was 
delighted when a son was born to him. Nevertheless 
he was indubitably not hap^oy at bottom, restless and 



422 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

disquieted, his disquietude sometimes amounting to 
agony. 

Now on one of his bad days he was in the field with his 
peasants, and one of them happened to say to him, in an- 
swer to a question from Levine why one farmer should in 
a certain case act more humanly than another : ** Men are 
not all alike : one man lives for his belly, like Mitiovuck, 
another for his soul, for God, like old Plato." ' — '^ What do 
you call," eried Levine, ^^Hiving for his soul, for God ?" 
The peasant answered : '' It's quite simple — living by the 
rule of God, of the truth. AH men are not the same, 
that's certain. You yourself, for instance, Constantino 
Dmitrich, you wouldn't do wrong by a poor man. " Levine 
gave no answer, but turned away with the phrase, living 
hy the rule of God, of the truth, sounding in his ears. 

Then he reflected that he had been born of parents pro- 
fessing this rule, as their parents again had professed it 
before them ; that he had sucked it in with his mother's 
milk ; that some sense of it, some strength and nourish- 
ment from it, had been ever with him although he knew it 
not ; that if he had tried to do the duties of his station it 
was by help of the secret support ministered by this rule ; 
that if in his moments of despairing restlessness and agony, 
when he was driven to think of suicide, he had yet not com- 
mitted suicide, it was because tliis rule had silently enabled 
him to do his duty in some degree, and had given him some 
hold upon life and happiness in consequence. 

The words came to him as a clue of which he could never 
again lose sight, and which with full consciousness and 
strenuons endeavor he must henceforth follow. He sees 
his nephews and nieces throwing their milk at one another 
and scolded by Dolly for it. He says to himself that these 
children are wasting their subsistence because they have 
not to earn it for themselves and do not know its value, 
and he exclaims inwardly : " I, a Christian, brought up in 
the faith, my life filled with the benefits of Christianity, 
living on these benefits without being conscious of it, I, 

1 A common name among Russian peasants. 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 423 

like these children, I have been trying to destroy what 
makes and builds up my life." But now the feeling has 
been borne in upon him, clear and precious, that what he 
has to do is le good ; he has " cried to HimJ^ What will 
come of it ? 

" I shall probably continue to get out of temper with my coach- 
man, to get into useless arguments, to air my ideas unseasonably ; 
I shall always feel a barrier between the sanctuary of my soul 
and the soul of other people, even that of my wife ; I shall always 
be holding her responsible for my annoyances and feeling sorry 
for it directly afterwards. I shall continue to pray without be- 
ing able to explain to myself why I pray ; but my inner life has 
won its liberty ; it will no longer be at the mercy of events, and 
every minute of my existence will have a meaning sure and pro- 
found which it will be in my power to impress on every single 
one of my actions, that of being good. " 

AVith these words the noyel of Anna Karhiine ends. 
But in Levine's religious experiences Count Tolstoi was 
relating his own, and the history is continued in three 
autobiographical works translated from him, which have 
within the last two or three years been published in Paris : 
3Ia Confession, Ma Religion y and Que Faire. Our author 
announces further, ^' two great works,'' on which he has 
spent six years : one a criticism of dogmatic theology, the 
other a new translation of the four Gospels, with a con- 
cordance of his own arranging. The results which he 
claims to have established in these two works, are, how- 
ever, indicated sufficiently in the three published volumes 
which I have named above. 

These autobiographical volumes show the same extraor- 
dinary penetration, the same perfect sincerity, which are 
exhibited in the author's novel. As autobiography they 
are of profound interest, and they are full, moreover, of 
acute and fruitful reniarks. I have spoken of the advan- 
tages which the Eussian genius possesses for imaginative 
literature. Perhaps for Biblical exegesis, for the criticism 
of religion and its documents, the advantage lies more with 
the older nations of the West. They will have more of 
the experience, width of knowledge, patience^ sobriet}^. 



424 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

requisite for these studies ; tliej may probably be less im- 
pulsive, less heady. 

Count Tolstoi regards the change accomplished in him- 
self during the last half-dozen years, he regards his recent 
studies and the ideas which he has acquired through them, 
as epoch-making in his life and of capital importance : — 

' ' Five years ago faith came to me ; I believed in the doctrine 
of Jesus, and all my life suddenly changed. I ceased to desire 
that which previously I desired, and, on the other hand, I took 
to desiring what I had never desired before. That which for- 
merly used to appear good in my eyes appeared evil, that which 
used to appear evil appeared good." 

The novel of Amia Karenine belongs to that past which 
Count Tolstoi has left behind him ; his new studies and 
the works founded on them are what is important ; light 
and salvation are there. Yet I will venture to express my 
doubt whether these works contain, as their contribution 
to the cause of religion and to the establishment of the 
true mind and message of Jesus, much that had not already 
been given or indicated by Count Tolstoi in relating, in 
Anna Karenine, Levine's mental history. Points raised 
in that history are developed and enforced ; there is an 
abundant and admirable exhibition of knowledge of human 
nature, penetrating insight, fearless sincerity, wit, sar- 
casm, eloquence, style. And we have too the direct autobio- 
graphy of a man not only interesting to us from his soul 
and talent, but highly interesting also from his nationality, 
position, and course of proceeding. But to light and sal- 
vation in the Christian religion we are not, I think, brought 
very much nearer than in Levine's history. 1 ought to 
add that what was already present in that history seems 
to me of high importance and value. Let us see what it 
amounts to. 

I must be general and I must be brief ; neither my limits 
nor my purpose permit the introduction of what is abstract. 
But in Count Tolstoi's religious philosophy there is very 
little which is abstract, arid. The idea of life is his master 
idea in studying and establishing religion. He speaks im- 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 425 

jDatiently of St. Paul as a source, in common with the 
Fathers and the Reformers, of that ecclesiastical theology 
which misses the essential and fails to present Christ's 
Gospel aright. Yet Paul's "law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus freeing me from the law of sin and death " 
is the pith and ground of all Count Tolstoi's theology. 
Moral life is the gift of God, is God, and this true life, this 
union with God to which we aspire, we reach through 
Jesus. We reach it through union with Jesus and by 
adopting his life. This doctrine is proved true for us by the 
life in God, to be acquired through Jesus, being what our 
nature feels after and moves to, by the warning of misery 
if we are served from it, the sanction of happiness if we 
find it. Of the access for us, at any rate, to the spirit of 
life, us who are born in Christendom, are in touch, con- 
scious or unconscious, with Christianity, this is the true 
account. Questions over which the churches spend so 
much labor and time — questions about the Trinity, about 
the godhead of Christ, about the procession of the Holy 
Ghost, are not vital ; what is vital is the doctrine of access 
to the spirit of life through Jesus. 

Sound and saving doctrine, in my opinion, this is. It 
may be gathered in a great degree from what Count 
Tolstoi had already given us in the novel of Anna 
Karenine. But of course it is greatly developed, in the 
special works which have followed. Many of these devel- 
opments are, I will repeat, of striking force, interest, and 
value.. In Atuia Karenine we had been told of the scep- 
ticism of the upper and educated classes in Russia. But 
what reality is added by such an anecdote as the following 
from Ma Confession : — 

' ' I remember that when I was about eleven years old we had 
a visit one Sunday from a boy, since dead, who announced to my 
brother and me, as great news, a discovery just made at his 
public school. This discovery was to the effect that God had no 
existence, and that everything which we were taught about Him 
was pure invention." 

Count Tolstoi touched^ in Anna Karenine, on the failure 



426 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

of science to tell a man what his life means. Many a sharp 
stroke does he add in his latter writings : — 

" Development is going on, and there are laws which guide it. 
You yourself are a part of the whole. Having come to under- 
stand the whole so far as is possible, and having comprehended 
the law of development, you will comprehend also your place in 
that whole, you will understand yourself. 

" In spite of all the shame the confession costs me, there was a 
time, I declare, when I tried to look as if I was satisfied with this 
sort of thing ! " 

But the men of science may take comfort from hearing 
that Count Tolstoi treats the men of letters no better than 
them, although he is a man of letters himself : — 

" The judgment which my literary companions passed on life 
was to the effect that life in general is in a state of progress, and 
that in this development we, the men of letters, take the prin- 
cipal part. The vocation of us artists and poets is to instruct the 
world ; and to prevent my coming out with the natural question, 
'.What am I, and what am I to teach? " it was explained to mo 
that it was useless to know that, and that the artist and the poet 
taught without perceiving how. I passed for a superb artist, a 
great poet, and consequently it was but natural I should aj^pro- 
priate this theory. I, the artist, the poet — I wrote, I taught, 
without myself knowing what. I was paid for what I did. I 
had everything : splendid fare and lodging, women, society ; I 
had la gloire. Consequently, what I taught was very good. This 
faith in the importance of poetry and of the development of life 
was a religion, and I was one of its priests — a very agreeable and 
advantageous office. 

"And I lived ever so long in this belief, never doubting but 
that it was true ! " 

The adepts of this literary and scientific religion are not 
numerous, to be sure, in comparison with the mass of the 
people, and the mass of the people, as Levine had re- 
marked, find comfort still in the old religion of Christen- 
dom ; but of the mass of the people our literary and scien- 
tific instructors make no account. Like Solomon and 
Schopenhauer, these gentlemen, and '^ society " along 
with them, are, moreover, apt to say that life is, after all, 
vanity : but then they all know of no life except their own. 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 427 

" It used to appear to me that the small number of cultivated, 
rich, and idle men, of whom I was one, composed the whole of 
humanity, and that the millions and millions of other men who 
had lived and are still living were not in reality men at all. In- 
comprehensible as it now seems to me, that I should have gone 
on considering life without seeing the life which was surround- 
ing me on all sides, the life of humanity ; strange as it is to think 
that I should have been so mistaken, and have fancied mj^ life, 
the life of the Solomons and the Schopenhauers, to be the veri- 
table and normal life, while the life of the masses was but a 
matter of no importance— strangely odd as this seems tome now, 
— so it was, notwithstanding." 



(( 



And this pretentious minority, who call themselves 
society/' ^^the world/' and to whom their own life, the 
life of '^ the world," seems the only life worth naming, 
are all the while miserable ! Our author found it so in 
his own experience : — 

" In my life, an exceptionally happy one from a worldly point 
of view, I can number such a quantity of sufferings endured for 
the sake of " the world," that they would be enough to furnish 
a martyr for Jesus. All the most painful passages in my life, 
beginning with the orgies and duels of my student days, the 
wars I have been in, the illnesses, and the abnormal and unbear- 
able conditions in which I am living now — all this is but one 
martyrdom endured in the name of the doctrine of tlie world. 
Yes, and I speak of my own life, exceptionally happy from the 
world's point of view. 

" Let any sincere man pass his life in review, and he will per- 
ceive that never, not once, has he suffered through practising the 
doctrine of Jesus ; the chief part of the miseries of his life have 
proceeded solely from his following, contrary to his inclination, 
the spell of the doctrine of the world." 

On the other hand, the simple, the multitudes, outside 
of this spell, are comparatively contented : — 

" In opposition to what I saw in our circle, where life without 
faith is possible, and where I doubt whether one in a thousand 
would confess himself a believer, I conceive that among the 
people (in Russia) there is not one sceptic to many thousands of 
believers. Just contrary to what I saw in our circle, where life 
passes in idleness, amusements, and discontent with life. I saw 



428 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

that of these men of the people the whole life was passed in 
severe labor, and yet they were contented with life. Instead 
of complaining like the persons in our world of the hardship of 
their lot, these poor people received sickness and disappointments 
without any revolt, without opposition, but with a firm and 
tranquil confidence that so it was to be, that it could not be 
otherwise, and that it was all right." 

All this is but development, sometimes rather surprising, 
but always powerful and interesting, of what we have 
already had in the pages of A^ina Karenine. And like 
Levine in that novel, Count Tolstoi was driven by his 
inward struggle and misery very near to suicide. What 
is new in the recent books is the solution and cure an- 
nounced. Levine had accepted a provisional solution of 
the difficulties oppressing him ; he had lived right on, so 
to speak, obeying his conscience, but not asking how far 
all his actions hung together and were consistent : — 

" He advanced money to a peasant to get him out of the clutches 
of a money-lender, but did not give up the arrears due to himself ; 
he punished thefts of wood strictly, but would have scrupled to 
impound a peasant's cattle trespassing on his fields ; he did not 
pay the wages of a laborer whose father's death caused him to 
leave work in the middle of harvest, but he pensioned and main- 
tained his old servants ; he let his peasants wait wliile he w^ent 
to give his wife a kiss after he came home, but would not have 
made them wait while he went to visit his bees." 

Count Tolstoi has since advanced to a far more definite 
and stringent rule of life — the positive doctrine, he thinks, 
of Jesus. It is the determination and promulgation of 
this rule which is the novelty in our author's recent works. 
He extracts this essential doctrine, or rule of Jesus, from 
the Sermon on the Mount, and presents it in a body of 
commandments — Christ's commandments ; the pith, he 
says, of the New Testament, as the Decalogue is the pith 
of the Old. These all-important commandments of Christ 
are '^commandments of peace," and five in number. The 
first commandment is: ''Live in peace with all men; 
treat no one as contemptible and beneath you. Not only 
allow yourself no anger, but do not rest until you have 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 429 

dissipated even unreasonable anger in others against 
yonrself." The second is: ''No libertinage and no 
divorce ; let every man have one wife and every woman 
one husband. " The third: ''J^ever on any pretext take 
an oath of service of any kind ; all such oaths are imposed 
for a bad purpose." The fourth : ''Never employ force 
against the evil-doer ; bear whatever wrong is done to you 
without opposing the wrong-doer or seeking to have him 
punished/' The fifth and last : " Eenounce all distinc- 
tion of nationality ; do not admit that men of another 
nation may ever be treated by you as enemies ; love all men 
alike as alike near to you ; do good to all alike." 

If these five commandments were generally observed, 
says Count Tolstoi, all men would become brothers. 
Certainly the actual society in which we live would be 
changed and dissolved. Armies and wars would be re- 
nounced ; courts of justice, police, property, would be 
renounced also. And whatever the rest of us may do. 
Count Tolstoi at least will do his duty and follow Christ's 
commandments sincerely. He has given up rank, office, 
and property, and earns his bread by the labor of his own 
hands. "I believe in Christ's commandments," he says, 
" and this faith changes my whole former estimate of 
what is good and great, bad and low, in human life." At 
present — 

" Everything which I used to think bad and low — the rusticity 
of the peasant, the plainness of lodging, food, clothing, manners 
— all this has become good and great in my eyes. At present I 
can no longer contribute to anything which raises me externally 
above others, which separates me from them. I cannot, as 
formerly, recognize either in my own case or in that of others 
any title, rank, or quality beyond the title and quality of man. 
I cannot seek fame and praise ; I cannot seek a culture which 
separates me from men. I cannot refrain from seeking in my 
whole existence — in my lodging, my food, my clothing, and my 
ways of going on with people — whatever, far from separating me 
from the mass of mankind, draws me nearer to them." 

Whatever else we have or have not in Count Tolstoi, we 
have at least a great soul and a great writer. In his Bibli- 
cal exegesis, in the criticism by which he extracts and 



430 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

constructs his Five Commandments of Christ which are 
to be the rule of our lives, I find much which is question- 
able along with much which is ingenious and powerful. 
But I have neither space, nor, indeed, inclination, to 
criticise his exegesis here. The right moment, besides, 
for criticising this will come when the '' two great works," 
which are in preparation, shall have appeared. 

For the present I limit myself to a single criticism only 
— a general one. Christianity cannot be packed into any 
set of commandments. As I have somewhere or other 
said, " Christianity is a source ; no one supply of water 
and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum 
of Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much 
error, to exhibit any series of maxims, even those of the 
Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula 
into which Christianity may be run up." 

xAnd the reason mainly lies in the character of the 
Founder of Christianity and in the nature of his utter- 
ances. Not less important than the teachings given by 
Jesus in the temper of their giver, his temper of sweetness 
and reasonableness, of epieiheia. Goethe calls him a 
Schdivrmer, a fanatic ; he may much more rightly be called 
an opportunist. But he is an opportunist of an opposite 
kind from those who in politics, that ^' wild and dream- 
like trade " of insincerity, give themselves this name. 
They push or slacken, press their points hard or let them 
be, as may best suit the interests of their self-aggrandize- 
ment and of their party. Jesus has in view simply ^'the 
rule of God, of the truth." But this is served by waiting 
as well as by hasting forward, and sometimes served better. 

Count Tolstoi sees rightly that whatever the propertied 
and satisfied classes may think, the world, ever since Jesus 
Christ came, is judged ; '^ a new earth " is in prospect. 
It was ever in prospect with Jesus, and should be ever in 
prospect with his followers. And the ideal in prospect 
has to be realized. " If ye know these things, happy are 
ye if ye do them." But they are to be done through a 
great and widespread and long-continued change, and a 
change of the inner man to begin with. The most im- 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI. 431 

portant and fruitful utterances of Jesus, therefore, are 
not things which can be drawn up as a table of stiff and 
stark external commands, but the things which have most 
soul in them ; because these can best sink down into our 
soul, work there, set up an influence, form habits of con- 
duct, and prepare the future. The Beatitudes are on this 
account more helpful than the utterances from which 
Count Tolstoi builds up his Five Commandments. The 
very secret of Jesus, '^ He that loveth his life shall lose 
it, he that will lose his life shall save it," does not give 
us a command to be taken and followed in the letter, but 
an idea to work in our mind and soul, and of inexhaus- 
tible value there. 

Jesus paid tribute to the government and dined with 
the publicans, although neither the empire of Rome nor 
the high finance of Judea were compatible w^ith his ideal 
and with the '^ new earth'' Avhich that ideal must in the 
end create. Perhaps Levine's provisional solution, in a 
society like ours, was nearer to ^^ the rule of God, of the 
truth," than the more trenchant solution which Count 
Tolstoi has adopted for himself since. It seems calculated 
to be of more use. I do not know how it is in Russia, but 
in an English village the determination of '*' our circle" 
to earn their bread by the work of their hands would pro- 
duce only dismay, not fraternal joy, amongst that 
^' majority " who are so earning it already. *^ There are 
plenty of us to compete as things stand," the gardeners, 
carpenters, and smiths would say; ^^pray stick to your 
articles, your poetry, and nonsense ; in manual labor you 
will interfere with us, and be taking the bread out of our 
mouths." 

So I arrive at the conclusion that Count Tolstoi has 
perhaps not done well in abandoning the work af the poet 
and artist, and that he might with advantage return to it. 
But whatever he may do in the future, the work which he 
has already done, and his work in religion as well as his 
work in imaginative literature, is more than sufiQcient to 
signalize him as one of the most marking, interesting, and 
sympathy-inspiring men of our time — an honor, I must 
add, to Russia, although he forbids us to heed nationality. 



XIX. 

AMIEL.' 

It is somewhat late to speak of Amiel, bnt I was late in 
reading him. Goethe says that in seasons of cholera one 
should read no books but such as are tonic, and certainly 
in the season of old age this precaution is as salutary as in 
seasons of cholera. From what I heard I could clearly 
make out that AmieFs Journal was not a tonic book : the 
extracts from it which here and there I fell in with did 
not much please me ; and for a good while I left the book 
unread. 

But what M. Edmond Scherer writes I do not easily 
resist reading, and I found that M. Scherer had prefixed 
to Amiel's Journal a long and important introduction. 
This I read ; and was not less charmed by the mitis sapi- 
entia, the understanding, kindness and tenderness, with 
which the character of Amiel himself, whom M. Scherer 
had known in youth, was handled, than interested by the 
criticism on the Journal. Then I read Mrs. Humphry 
Ward's interesting notice, and then — for all biography is 
attractive, and of Amiel's life and circumstances I had by 
this time become desirous of knowing more — the Etude 
Biographique of Mademoiselle Berthe Vadier. 

Of Amiel's cultivation, refinement, and high feeling, of 
his singular graces of spirit and character, there could be 
no doubt. But the specimens of his work given by his 
critics left me hesitating. A poetess herself. Mademoiselle 
Berthe Vadier is much occupied with Amiel's poetry, and 
quotes it abundantly. Even Victor Hugo's poetry leaves 
me cold, I am so unhappy as not to be able to admire 
Olympio ; what am I to say, then, to Amiel's 

1 Published in Macmillan's Magazine, September, 1887. 
432 



AMIEL. 433 

" Journee 
lUuminee, 
Riant soleil d'avril, 
En quel songe 
Se plonge 
Mon coeur, et que veut-il " ? 

But M. Scherer and other critics, who do not require us 
to admire Amiel's poetry, maintain that in his Journal he 
has left ^^a book which will not die," a book describing a 
malady of which "the secret is sublime and the expression 
wonderful"; a marvel of *' speculative intuition," a 
"psychological experience of the utmost value." M. 
Scherer and Mrs. Humphry Ward give Amiel's Journal 
very decidedly the preference over the letters of an old 
friend of mine, Obermann. The quotations made from 
Amiel's Journal by his critics failed, I say, to enable me 
quite to understand this high praise. But I remember 
the time when a new publication by George Sand or by 
Sainte-Beuve was an event bringing to me a shock of 
pleasure, and a French book capable of renewing that 
sensation is seldom produced now. If Amiel's Journal 
was of the high quality alleged, what a pleasure to make 
acquaintance with it, what a loss to miss it ! In spite, 
therefore, of the unfitness of old age to bear atonic in- 
fluences, I at last read Amiel's Journal, — read it carefully 
through. Tonic it is not : but it is to be read with profit, 
and shoAVS, moreover, powers of great force and value, 
though not quite, I am inclined to think, in the exact 
line which his critics with one consent indicate. 

In speaking of Amiel at present, after so much has been 
written about him, I may assume that the main outlines 
of his life are known to my readers : that they know him 
to have been born in 1821 and to have died in 1881, to 
have passed the three or four best years of his youth at 
the University of Berlin, and the remainder of his life 
mostly at Geneva, as a professor, first of aesthetics, after- 
wards of philosophy. They know that his publications 
and lectures, during his lifetime, disappointed his friends, 
who expected much from his acquirements, talents, and 
28 



434 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

vivacity ; and that his fame rests upon two volumes of ex- 
tracts from many thousand pages of a private journal, 
Journal Intime, extending over more than thirty years, 
from 1848 to 1881, which he left behind him at his death. 
This Journal explains his sterility ; and displays in ex- 
plaining it, say his critics, such sincerity, with such gifts 
of expression and eloquence, of profound analysis and 
speculative intuition, as to make it most surely ''one of 
those books which will not die/'' 

The sincerity is unquestionable. As to the gifts of 
eloquence and expression, what are we to say ? M. 
Scherer speaks of an '' ever new eloquence " pouring it- 
self in the pages of the Journal : M. Paul Bourget, of 
" marvelous pages" where the feeling for nature finds 
an expression worthy of Shelley or Wordsworth : Mrs. 
Humphry Ward, of '' magic of style," of '' glow and splen- 
dor of expression," of the ''poet and artist" who fasci- 
nates us in AmieFs prose. I cannot quite agree. Ober- 
mann has been mentioned : it seems to me that we have 
only to place a passage from Senancour beside a passage 
from Amiel, to perceive the difference between a feeling 
for nature which gives magic to style and one which does 
not. Here and throughout I am to use as far as possible 
Mrs. Humphry Ward's translation, at once spirited and 
faithful, of Amiel's Journal. I will take a passage where 
Amiel has evidently some reminiscence of Senancour 
(whose work he knew well), is inspired by Senancour — a 
passage which has been extolled by M. Paul Bourget : — 

"Shall I ever enjoy again those marvelous reveries of past 
days, — as, for instance, once, when I was still quite a youth in 
the early dawn sitting amongst the ruins of the castle of Faii- 
cigny ; another time in the mountains above Lancy, under the 
mid-day sun, lying under a tree and visited by three butterflies ; 
and again another night on the sandy shore of the North Sea, 
stretched full length upon the beach, my eyes wandering over 
the Milky Way? Will they ever return to me, those grandiose, 
immortal, cosmogonic dreams in which one seems to carry the 
world in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite ? 
Divine moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought flies from world 
to world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respi- 



AMIEL. 435 

ration large, tranquil, and profound like that of the ocean, and 
hovers serene and boundless like the blue heaven ! Visits from 
the Muse Urania, who traces around the foreheads of those she 
loves the phosphorescent nimbus of contemplative power, and 
who pours into their hearts the tranquil intoxication, if not the 
authority of genius, — moments of irresistible intuition in which 
a man feels himself great as tlie universe and calm like God ! 
. . . What hours, what memories ! " 

And now for Obermann's turn, Obermann by the Lake 
of Bienne : — 

"My path lay beside the green waters of the Thiele. Feeling 
inclined to muse, and finding the night so warm that there was 
no hardship in being all night out of doors, I took the road to 
Saint Blaise. I descended a steep bank, and got upon the shore 
of the lake where its ripple came up and expired. The air was 
calm ; every one was at rest ; I remained there for hours. 
Towards morning the moon shed over the earth and waters the 
ineffable melancholy of her last gleams. Nature seems unspeak- 
ably grand, when, plunged in a long reverie, one hears the rip- 
pling of the waters upon a solitary strand, in the calm of a night 
still enkindled and luminous with the setting moon. 

"Sensibility beyond utterance, charm and torment of our vain 
years ; vast consciousness of a nature everywhere greater than 
we are, and everywhere impenetrable ; all-embracing passion, 
ripened wisdom, delicious self-abandonment — everything that 
a mortal heart can contain of life-weariness and yearning, I felt 
it all, I experienced it all, in this memorable night. I have made 
a grave step towards the age of decline, I have swallowed up ten 
years of life at once. Happy the simple, whose heart is always 
young ! " 

No translation can render adequately the cadence of 
diction, the " dying fall '' of reveries like those of Senan- 
cour or Rousseau. But even in a translation we must 
surely perceive that the magic of style is with Senanconr's 
feeling for nature, not AmieFs ; and in the original this is 
far more manifest still. 

Magic of style is creative : its possessor himself creates, 
and he inspires and enables his reader in some sort to 
create after him. And creation gives the sense of life 
and joy ; hence its extraordinary value. But eloquence 
may exist without magic of style, and this eloquence, ac- 
companying thoughts of rare worth and depth, may 



436 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

heighten their effect greatly. And M. Scherer says that 
Amiel's speculative philosophy is '* on a far other scale of 
vastness " than Senancour's, and therefore he gives the 
preference to the eloquence of Amiel, which clothes and 
conveys this vaster philosophy. Amiel was no doubt 
greatly Senancour's superior in culture and instruction 
generally ; in philosophical reading and what is called 
philosophical thought he was immensely his superior. 
My sense for philosophy, I know, is as far from satisfying 
Mr. Frederic Harrison as my sense for Hugo's poetry is 
from satisfying Mr. Swinburne. But I am too old to 
change and too hardened to hide what I think ; and 
when I am presented with philosophical speculations and 
told that they are *' on a high scale of vastness," I persist 
in looking closely at them and in honestly asking myself 
what I find to be their positive value. And we get from 
Amiel's powers of ^' speculative intuition " things like this — 

"Created spirits in the accomplishment of their destinies 
tend, so to speak, to form constellations and milky ways with- 
in the empyrean of the divinity ; in becoming gods, they sur- 
round the throne of the severeign with a sparkling court." 

Or this— 

"Is not mind the universal virtuality, the universe latent? 
If so, its zero would be the germ of the infinite, which is ex- 
pressed mathematically by the double zero (00)." 

Or, to let our philosopher develop himself at more length, 
let us take this return to the zero, which Mrs. Humphry 
Ward prefers here to render by notlmigness : — 

" This psychological reinvolution is an anticipation of death ; 
it represents the life beyond the grave, the return to Scheol, the 
soul fading into the world of ghosts or descending into the re- 
gion of Die Mutter ; it implies the simplification of the individual 
who, allowing all the accidents of personality to evaporate, 
exists henceforward only in the invisible state, the state of 
point, of potentiality, of pregnant nothingness. Is not this tlie 
true definition of mind ? is not mind, dissociated from space and 
time, just this? Its development, past or future, is contained in 
it just as a curve is contained in its algebraical formula. This 
nothing is an all. This punctum witliout dimensions is a piinctvm 

SClU't'US," 



AMIEL. 437 

French critics throw np their hands in dismay at the 
violence which the Germanized Amiel, propounding his 
speculative philosophy, often does to the French language. 
My objection is rather that such speculative philosophy, 
as that of which I have been quoting specimens has no 
value, is perfectly futile. And Amiel's Journal contains 
far too mucli of it. 

What is futile we may throw aside ; but when Amiel 
tells us of his'* protean nature essentially metamorpbos- 
able, polarizable, and virtual," when he tells us of his 
longing for ''^ totality," we must listen, although these 
phrases may in France, as M. Paul Bourget says, 
" raise a shudder in a humanist trained on Livy and Pas- 
cal." But these phrases stood for ideas which did prac- 
tically rule, in a great degree, AmieFs life, which he often 
develops not only with great subtlety, but also with force, 
clearness, and eloquence, making it both easy and in- 
teresting to us to follow him. But still, when we have 
the ideas present before us, I shall ask, what is their 
value, what does Amiel obtain in them for the service of 
either himself or other people ? 

Let us take first what, adopting his own phrase, we 
may call his '^bedazzlement with the infinite," his thirst 
for 'totality." Omnis deter minatio est negatio. Amiel 
has the gift and the bent for making his soul '* the ca- 
pacity for all form, not a soul but the soul." He finds it 
easier and more natural '' to hQ man th.2in « man." His 
permanent instinct is to be *' a subtle and fugitive spirit 
which no base can absorb or fix entirely." It costs 
him an effort to affirm his own personality : ''the in- 
finite draws me to it, the Henosis of Plotinus intoxicates 
me like a philter." 

It intoxicates him until the thought of absorption and 
extinction, the Nirvana of Buddhism, becomes his 
thought of refuge : — 

"The individual life is a nothing ignorant of itself , and as 
soon as this nothing knows itself, individual life is abolished in 
principle. For as soon as the illusion vanishes, Nothingness 
resumes its eternal sway, the suilering of life is over, error has 



43S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

disappeared, time and form have for this enfranchised individu- 
ality ceased to be ; the colored air-bubble has burst in the 
infinite space, and the misery of thought has sunk to rest in the 
changeless repose of all-embracing Nothing." 

With this bedazement with the infinite and this drift 
towards Buddhism comes the impatience with all produc- 
tion, with even poetry and art themselves, because of their 
necessary limits and imperfection : — 

" Composition demands a concentration, decision, and pliancy 
which I no longer possess. I cannot fuse together materials and 
ideas. If we are to give anything a form we must, so to speak, 
be the tyrants of it. We must treat our subject brutally and 
not be always trembling lest we should be doing it a wrong. 
We must be able to transmute and absorb it into our own sub- 
stance. This sort of confident effrontery is beyond me ; my 
whole nature tends to tliat impersonality which respects and sub- 
ordinates itself to the object ; it is love of truth which holds me 
back from concluding and deciding." 

The desire for the all, the impatience with what is par- 
tial and limited, the fascination of the infinite, are the 
topics of page after page in the Journal. It is a prosaic 
mind which has never been in contact with ideas of this 
sort, never felt their charm. They lend themselves well 
to poetry, but what are we to say of their value as ideas to 
be lived with, dilated on, made the governing ideas of 
life ? Except for use in passing, and with the power to 
dismiss them again, they are unprofitable. Shelley^s 

*' Life like a dome of many-colored glass 
Stains the white radiance of eternity 
Until death tramples it to fragments " 

has value as a splendid image nobly introduced in a 
beautiful and impassioned poem. But Amiel's *^ colored 
air-bubble," as a positive piece of *' speculative intuition," 
has no value whatever. Nay, the thoughts which have 
positive truth and value, the thoughts to be lived with 
and dwelt upon, the thoughts which are a real acquisi- 
tion for our minds, are precisely thoughts which counter- 
act the '* vague aspiration and indeterminate desire^* 
possessing Amiel and filling his Journal : they are thoughts 



AMIEL. 439 

insisting on the need of limit, the feasibility of perform- 
ance. Goethe says admirably — 

'* Wer grosses will muss sich zusammenraffen : 
In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister." 

*'He who will do great things most pull himself to- 
gether : it is in working within limits that the master 
comes out." Buff on says not less admirably — 

"Tout sujet est un ; et quelque vaste qu'il soit, 11 peut etre 
renferme dans un seul discours.'' 

'* Every subject is one ; and however vast it may be is 
capable of being contained in a single discourse." The 
ideas to live with, the ideas of sterling value to us, are, I 
repeat, ideas of this kind : ideas staunchly counteracting 
and reducing the power of the infinite and indeterminate, 
not paralyzing us with it. 

And indeed we have not to go beyond Amiel himself 
for proof of this. Amiel was paralyzed by living in these 
ideas of *' vague aspiration and indeterminate desire," of 
*' confounding his personal life in the general life," b}'- 
feeding on these ideas, treating them as august and pre- 
cious, and filling hundreds of pages of Journal with them. 
He was paralyzed by it, he became impotent and miserable. 
And he knew it, and tells us of it himself with a power of 
analysis and with a sad eloquence which to me are much 
more interesting and valuable than his philosophy of Maia 
and the Great Wheel. '^ By your natural tendency," he 
3ays to himself, ''you arrive at disgust with life, despair, 
pessimism." And again: ''Melancholy outlook on all 
sides. Disgust with myself." And again : " I cannot 
deceive myself as to the fate in store for me : increasing 
isolation, inward disappointment, enduring regrets, a 
melancholy neither to be consoled nor confessed, a mourn- 
ful old age, a slow agony, a death in the desert." And 
all this misery by his own fault, his own mistakes. "To 
live is to conquer incessantly ; one must have the courage 
to be happy. I turn in a vicious circle ; I have never had 
clear sight of my true vocation." 



440 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

I cannot, therefore, fall in with that particular line of 
admiration which critics, praising Amiel's Journal, have 
commonly followed. I cannot join in celebrating his 
prodigies of speculative intuition, the glow and splendor 
of his beatific vision of absolute knowledge, the marvelous 
pages in which his deep and vast philosophic thought is 
laid bare, the secret of his sublime malady is expressed. 
I hesitate to admit that all this part of the Journal has 
even a very profound pyschological interest : its interest 
is rather pathological. In reading it we are not so much 
pursuing a study of psychology as a study of mental 
pathology. 

But the Journal reveals a side in Amiel which his critics, 
so far as I have seen, have hardly noticed, a side of real 
power, originality, and value. He says himself that he 
never had clear sight of his true vocation : well, his true 
vocation, it seems to me, was that of a literary critic. 
Here he is admirable : M. Scherer was a true friend when 
he offered to introduce him to an editor, and suggested 
an article on Uhland. There is hardly a literary criticism 
in these two volumes which is not masterly, and which 
does not make one desire more of the same kind. And 
not Amiel's literary criticism only, but his criticism of 
society, politics, national character, religion, is in general 
well informed, just, and penetrating in an eminent degree. 
Any one single page of this criticism is worth, in my 
opinion, a hundred of AmieFs pages about the Infinite 
Illusion and the Great Wheel. It is to this side in Amiel 
that I desire now to draw attention. I would have ab- 
stained from writing about him if I had only to disparage 
and to find fault, only to say that he had been overpraised, 
and that his dealings with Maia seemed to me profitable 
neither for himself nor for others. 

Let me first take Amiel as a critic of literature, and of 
the literature which he naturally knew best, French liter- 
ature. Hear him as a critic on the best of critics, Sainte- 
Beuve, of whose death (1869) he had just heard : — 

" The fact is, Sainte-Beuve leaves a greater void behind him 
than either Beranger or Lamartine ; their greatness was already 



AMIEL. 441 

distant, historical ; he was still helping us to think. The true 
critic supplies all the world with a basis. He represents the 
public judgment, that is to say, the public reason, the touch- 
stone, the scales, the crucible, which tests the value of each 
man and the merit of each work. Infallibility of judgment is 
perhaps rarer than anything else, so fine a balance of qualities 
does it demand— qualities both natural and acquired, qualities 
of both mind and heart. What years of labor, what study and 
comparison, are needed to bring the critical judgment to matur- 
ity ! Like Plato's sage, it is only at fifty that the critic is risen 
to the true height of his literary priesthood, or, to put it less 
pompously, of his social function. Not till then has he com- 
passed all modes of being, and made every shade of appreciation 
his own. And Saint-Beuve joined to this infinitely refined cul- 
ture a prodigious memory and an incredible multitude of facts 
and anecdotes stored up for the service of his thought." 

The criticism is so sound, so admirably put, and so 
charming, that one wishes Sainte-Beuve coald have read 
it himself. 

Try Amiel next on the touchstone afforded by that 
'' half genius, half charlatan," Victor Hugo : — 

" I have been again looking through Victor Hugo's Paris (1867). 
For ten years event after event has given the lie to the prophet, 
but the confidence of the prophet in his own imaginings is not 
therefore a whit diminished. Humility and common sense are 
only fit for Lilliputians. Victor Hugo superbly ignores every- 
thing which he has not foreseen. He does not know that pride 
limits the mind, and that a limitless pride is a littleness of soul. 
If he could but learn to rank himself with other men and France 
with other nations, he would see things more truly, and would 
not fall into his insane exaggerations, his extravagant oracles. 
But proportion and justness his chords will never know. He is 
vowed to the Titanic ; his gold is always mixed with lead, his 
insight with childishness, his reason with madness. He cannot 
be simple ; like the blaze of a house on fire, his light is blinding. 
In short, he astonishes but provokes, he stirs but annoys. His 
note is always half or two-thirds false, and that is why he per- 
petually makes us feel uncomfortable. The great poet in him 
cannot get clear of the charlatan. A few pricks of Voltaire's 
irony would have made the inflation of this genius collapse, and 
rendered him stronger by rendering him saner. It is a public 
misfortune that the most powerful poet of France should not 
have better understood his role, and that, unlike the Hebrew 



442 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

prophets who chastised because they loved, he flatters his fellow- 
citizens from system and from pride. France is the world, Paris 
is France, Hugo is Paris. Bow down and worship, ye nations I " 

Finally, we will hear Amiel on a consummate and su- 
preme French classic, as perfect as Hugo is flawed, La 
Fontaine : — 

" Went through my La Fontaine yesterday, and reiiiarked his 
omissions. ... He has not an echo of chivalry haunting him. 
His French history dates from Louis XIV. His geography ex- 
tends in reality but a few square miles, and reaches neither the 
Rhine nor the Loire, neither the mountains nor the sea. He 
never invents his subjects, but indolently takes them ready- 
made from elsewhere. But with all this, what an adorable 
writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a master of the 
comic and the satirical, what a teller of a story ! I am never tired 
of him, though I know half his fables by heart. In the matter 
of vocabulary, turns of expression, tones, idioms, his language is 
perhaps the richest of the great period, for it combines skilfully 
the archaic with the classical, the Gaulish element with what is 
French. Variety, finesse, sly fun, sensibility, rapidity, concise- 
ness, suavity, grace, gaiety — when necessary nobleness, serious- 
ness, grandeur — you find everything in our fabulist. And the 
happy epithets, and the telling proverbs, and the sketches dashed 
off and the unexpected audacities, and the point driven well 
home ! One cannot say what he has not, so many diverse apti- 
tudes he has. 

'* Compare his Woodcutter and Death with Boileau's, and you 
can measure the prodigious difference between the artist and the 
critic who wanted to teach him better. La Fontaine brings 
visibly before you the poor peasant under the monarchy, Boileau 
but exhibits a drudge sweating under his load. The first is a 
historic witness, the second a school-versifier. La Fontaine en- 
ables you to reconstruct the whole society of his age ; the 
pleasant old soul from Champagne, with his animals, turns out 
to be the one and only Homer of France. 

' ' His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of gross- 
ness. Tliis, no doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. 
The religious string is wanting to his lyre, he has nothing which 
shows him to have known either Christianity or the high tragedies 
of the soul. Kind Nature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and 
Montaigne his gospel. In other words, his horizon is that of the 
Renascence. This islet of paganism in the midst of a Catholic 
society ia very curious ; the paganism is perfectly simple and 
franjj;,'- 



AMIEL. 443 

These are but notes, jottings in his Journal and Amiel 
passed from them to broodings over the infinite, and per- 
sonality, and totality. Probably the literary criticism 
which he did so well, and for which he shows a true 
vocation, gave him nevertheless but little pleasure because 
he did it thus fragmentarily, and by fits and starts. To 
do it thoroughly, to make his fragments into wholes, 
to fit them for coming before the public, composi- 
tion with its toils and limits was necessary. Toils and 
limits composition indeed has ; yet all composition is a 
kind of creation, creation gives, as I have already said, 
pleasure, and when successful and sustained, more than 
pleasure joy. Amiel, had he tried the experiment with 
literary criticism, where lay his true vocation, would have 
found it so. Sainte-Beuve, whom he so much admires, 
would have been the most miserable of men if his pro- 
duction had been but a volume or two of middling poems 
and a journal. But Sainte-Beuve's motto, as Amiel him- 
self notices, was that of the Emperor Severus : Lahoremus. 
''Work," Sainte-Beuve confesses to a friend, "is my 
sore burden, but it is also my great resource. I eat my 
heart out when I am not up to the neck in work ; there 
you have the secret of the life I lead." If M. Scherer's 
introduction to the Revue Germanique could but have 
been used, if Amiel could but have written the article on 
Uhland, and followed it up by plenty of articles more ! 

I have quoted largely from Amiel's literary criticism, 
because this side of him has, so far as I have observed, 
received so little attention and yet deserves attention so 
eminently. But his more general criticism, too, shows, 
as I have said, the same high qualities as his criticism 
of authors and books. I must quote one or two of his 
aphorisms ; U esprit sert lien a tout, mais ne suffit a rien : 
*' TVits are of use for everything, sufficient for nothing." 
Une societe vit de sa foi et se developpe par la science : '^ A 
society lives on its faith and develops itself by science." 
L^£tat liberal est ir realisable avec une religion antiliberale, 
etpresqueirrealisable avec V absence de religion : "Liberal 
communities are impossible with an anti-liberal religion. 



444 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

and almost impossible with the absence of religion." But 
epigrammatic sentences of this sort are perhaps not so very 
difficult to produce, in French at any rate. Let us take 
Amiel when he has room and verge enough to show what he 
can really say which is important about society, religion, 
national life and character. We have seen what an influ- 
ence his years passed in Germany had upon him : we have 
seen how severely he judges Victor Hugo's faults ; the 
faults of the French nation at large he judges with a like 
severity. But what a fine and just perception does the 
following passage show of the deficiencies of Germany, 
the advantage which the western nations have in their 
more finished civilization : — 

"It is in the novel that the average vulgarity of German 
society, and its inferiority to the societies of France and England 
are most clearly visible. The notion of a thing's jarring on the 
taste is wanting to German aesthetics. Their elegance knows 
nothing of grace ; they have no sense of the enormous distance 
between distinction (gentlemanly, ladylike) and their stiff Vor- 
nehmlichkeit. Their imagination lacks style, training, education 
and knowledge of the world ; it is stamped with an ill-bred air 
even in its Sunday clothes. The race is practical and intelligent, 
but common and ill-mannered. Ease, amiability, manners, 
wit, animation, dignity, charm, are qualities which belong to 
others. 

" Will that inner freedom of soul, that profound harmony of 
all the faculties, which I have so often observed among the best 
Germans, ever come to the surface? Will the conquerors of to- 
day ever civilize their forms of life ? It is by their future novels 
that we si 1 all be able to judge. As soon as the German novel 
can give us quite good society, the Germans will be in the 
raw stage no longer."' 

And this pupil of Berlin, this devourer of German 
books, this victim, say the French critics, to the contagion 
of German style, after three hours, one day, of a Gesch- 
iclite der ^sthetik in Deutschland, breaks out : — 

"Learning and even thought are not everything. A little 
esprit, point, vivacity, imagination, grace, would do no harm. 
Do these pedantic books leave a single image or sentence, a 
single strikiug or new fact, in the memory when one lays them 



AMIEL. 445 

down ! No, nothing but fatigue and confusion. Oh, for clear- 
ness, terseness, brevity ! Diderot, Voltaire, or even Galiani ! 
A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer, Renan, Victor Cherbu- 
lioz, gives one more pleasure, and makes one ponder and reflect 
more than a thousand of these German pages crammed to the 
margin and showing the work itself rather than its result. The 
Germans heap the faggots for the pile, the French bring the fire. 
Spare me your lucubrations, give me facts or ideas. Keep your 
vats, your must, your dregs, to yourselves ; I want wine fully 
made, wine which will sparkle in the glass, and kindle my spirits 
instead of oppressing them. " 

Amiel may have been led away deteriora sequi : he may 
have Germanized until he has become capable of the verb de- 
'person7ialiser and the noun reimplicatioii ; but after all, his 
heart is in the right place : videt meliora jwohatque. He 
remains at bottom the man who said : Le livreserait mo7i 
amiition. He adds, to be sure, that it wonld be son am- 
lition, '^ if ambition were not vanity, and vanity of vani- 
ties." 

Yet this disenchanted brooder, ^-full of a tranquil dis- 
gust at the futility of our ambitions, the void of our exist- 
ence," bedazzled with the infinite, can observe the world 
and society with consummate keenness and shrewdness, and 
at the same time with a delicacy which to the man of the 
world is in general wanting. Is it possible to analyze le 
grand monde, high society, as the Old World knows it and 
America knows it not, more acutely than Amiel does in 
what follows ? — 

" In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on 
ambrosia and concerned themselves with no interests but such as 
are noble. Care, need, passion, do not exist. All realism is sup- 
pressed as brutal. In a word, what is called le grand monde 
gives itself for the moment the flattering illusion that it is mov- 
ing in an ethereal atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. 
For this reason all vehemence, any cry of nature, all real suffer- 
ing, all heedless familiarity, any genuine sign of passion, are start- 
ling and distasteful in this delicate milieu, and at once destroy 
the collective work, the cloud-palace, the imposing architectural 
creation raised by common consent. It is like the shrill cock- 
crow which breaks the spell of all enchantments, and puts the 
fairies to flight. These select gatherings produce without intend- 



440 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

iug it a sort of concert for eye and ear, an improvised work of 
art. By the instinctive collaboration of everybody concerned, 
wit and taste hold festival, and the associations of reality are ex- 
changed for the associations of imagination. So understood, 
society is a form of poetry ; the cultivated classes deliber- 
ately recompose the idyll of tlie past, and the buried world of 
Astraea. Paradox or not, I believe that these fugitive attempts 
to reconstruct a dream, whose only end is beauty, represent 
confused reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human 
heart ; or rather, aspirations towards a harmony of things which 
every-day reality denies to us, and of which art alone gives us a 
glimpse." 

I remember reading in an American newspaper a solemn 
letter by an excellent republican, asking what were a shop- 
man's or a laborer's feelings when he walked through Eaton 
or Chatsworth. Amiel will tell him: they are ^'reminis- 
cences of an age of gold haunting the human heart, aspira- 
tions towards a harmony of things which every-day reality 
denies to us.'' I appeal to my friend the author of Trium- 
'pliant Democracy himself, to say whether these are to be 
had in walking through Pittsburg. 

Indeed it is by contrast with American life that Nirvdna 
appears to Amiel so desirable : — 

" For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. 
They must win gold, predominance, power ; they must crush 
rivals, subdue nature. They have their heart set on the means, 
and never for an instant think of the end. They confound being 
with individual being, and the expansion of self with happiness. 
This means that they do not live by the soul, that they ignore 
the immutable and eternal, bustle at the circumference of their 
existence because tliey cannot penetrate to its center. They are 
restless, eager, positive, because they are superficial. To what 
end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle ? It is all a mere being 
stunned and deafened ! " 

Space is failing me, but I must yet find room for a 
less indirect criticism of democracy than the foregoing re- 
marks on American life : — 

' ' Each function to the most worthy : this maxim is the professed 
rule of all constitutions, and serves to test them. Democracy is 
not forbidden to apply it ; but Democracy rarely does apply it. 



AMIEL. 447 

because she holds, for example, that the most worthy man is the 
man who pleases her, whereas he who pleases her is not always 
the most worthy ; and because she supposes that reason guides 
the masses, whereas in reality they are most commonly led by 
passion. And in the end every falsehood has to be expiated, 
for truth always takes its revenge." 

What publicists and politicians have to learn is, that *' the 
ultimate ground upon which every civilization rests is the 
average morality of the masses and a sufficient amount of 
practical righteousness." But where does duty find its in- 
spiration and sanctions ? In religion. And what does 
Amiel think of the traditional religion of Christendom, 
the Christianity of the Churches ? He tells us repeat- 
edly ; but a month or two before his death, with death in 
full view, he tells us with peculiar impressiveness : — 

" The whole Semitic dramaturgy has come to seem to me a 
work of the imagination. The apostolic documents have changed 
in value and meaning to my eyes. The distinction between be- 
lief and truth has grown clearer and clearer to me. Rengious 
pyschology has become a simple phenomenon, and has lost its 
fixed and absolute value. The apologetics of Pascal Leibnitz, 
Secretan, appear to me no more convincing than those of the 
Middle Age, for they assume that which is in question — a re- 
vealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeable Christianity." 

Is it possible, he asks, to receive at this day the common 
doctrine of a Divine Providence directing all the circum- 
stances of our life, and conseqaently inflicting upon us our 
miseries as means of education ? 

" Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of 
the laws of nature ? Hardly. But what this faith makes objec- 
tive we may take subjectively. The moral being may moralize 
his suffering in turning the natural fact to account for the edu- 
cation of his inner man. What he cannot change he calls the 
will of God, and to will what God wills brings him peace." 

But can a religion, Amiel asks again, without miracles, 
without unverifiable mystery, be efficacious, have influence 
with the many ? And again he answers : — 

" Pious fiction is still fiction. Truth has superior rights. The 
world m\ist adapt itself to truth, not truth to the world. Coper- 



448 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

iiicus upset the astronomy of the Middle Age ; so much the 
worse for the astronomy. The Everlasting Gospel is revolution- 
izing the Churches ; what does it matter ? " 

This is water to our mill, as the Germans say, indeed. 
But I have come even thus late in the day to speak of 
Amiel, not because I found him supplying water for any 
particular mill, either mine or any other, but because it 
seemed to me that by a whole important side he was em- 
inently worth knowing, and that to this side of him the 
public, here in England at any rate, had not had its at- 
tention sufficiently drawn. If in the seventeen thousand 
pages of the Journal there are many pages still unpub- 
lished in which Amiel exercises his true vocation of critic, 
of literary critic more especially, let his friends give them 
to us, let M. Scherer introduce them to us, let Mrs. 
Humphry Ward translate them for us. But sat patrim 
Priamoque datum : Ma'ia has had her full share of space 
already : I will not ask for a word more about the infinite 
illusion, or the double zero, or the Great Wheel. 

THE EI^D. 



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